Chapter 3
We met at a small café near my father’s house.
I arrived with my walker because my balance had been worse that week. I hated it. I hated the way people’s eyes moved to it first, then jumped away as if the walker’s feelings might be hurt.
Nathan did not look away.
He stood when I approached, not too quickly, not too dramatically.
“Clara?” he asked.
I nodded.
He was handsome in a clean, ordinary way. Dark hair, calm eyes, black coat, no wedding-ring tan line, no actor’s grin. He looked like someone who listened before deciding who to become.
I told him the rules.
No kissing unless staged briefly.
No personal vows beyond what we agreed.
No dramatic declarations.
No pretending we had some great love story.
“I just want the day,” I said. “That’s all.”
Nathan stirred his coffee, then looked at me.
“What do you want people to believe?”
The question caught me off guard.
I had spent days thinking about flowers and chairs and how long I could stand without needing to sit. I had not thought about belief.
“I want my father to believe he didn’t pay for a funeral rehearsal,” I said quietly.
Nathan’s face changed.
Not pity.
Understanding.
“My mother died when I was twenty-eight,” he said. “Cancer. She hated how everyone started treating her like she had already left the room.”
I looked down at my hands.
“That’s exactly it.”
He nodded.
“Then my condition is simple.”
I braced myself.
“If I do this,” he said, “I will not make you feel like a prop in your own goodbye.”
I did not know what to say.
So I said the only safe thing.
“Fine.”
He gave a small smile.
“Fine.”
May you like
That was how I hired a stranger to stand beside me at my wedding.
And somehow, that stranger became the first person in weeks who did not look at me like I was already gone.
