The Wedding Day

—•—


Only she remembers what happened on her wedding.

Rain slackens to a fine silver thread, then stops, leaving the garden rinsed and shining. The stone path holds the sky like a shallow bowl. Roses drink the last clinging drops, their petals heavy, bruised at the edges, perfect where it matters. Voices gather in the hedges and behind chairs—low laughter, a cough someone thinks is hidden, a program folded into a fan. She inhales the breath of wet earth, green and mineral and newly alive, and steps outside.

Her shoes touch the first stone and the path answers—soft, a whisper through leather. The veil lifts in a small wind, and for a heartbeat she imagines it floating off toward the treeline like a white bird surprised by its own freedom. She steadies it with two fingers. It settles, tames, breathes with her. She moves forward.

The garden is arranged the way she asked—rows of chairs draped in white, a simple arch of willow and ribbon, garlands tied with knots that mean something only to her. But there is something she did not ask for and cannot yet name. It waits at the edge of vision. She feels it like a pulse in her wrists.

The first reflection meets her in a puddle that survived the rain. It is a small mirror, cheap and honest. In it, her face is calm; her real face feels less certain. She pauses long enough to see the difference—eyes that in the water seem sure, eyes above that know a seam is running through the day where there shouldn’t be one. She moves again before anyone can call her name.

The guests turn as one—cousins with sunfreckled noses, the neighbor who never stops whistling in his yard, a woman whose perfume she recognizes from the train. Smiles widen, shoulders angle to see. Hands lift phones and lower them again when they remember the request. She hears the small symphony of fabric when people shift in their seats. At the far end, under the willow, he waits with his hands folded and his chin tilted the way he does when he’s holding back a grin. He is a constant in a field of shimmer, a nail through a ribbon.

She takes a step and the air clears, then bends again, like heat above a road. The something she could not name leans closer. That is when she sees them.

They are not wall mirrors. They are tall and freestanding, their frames mismatched—black lacquer, tarnished silver, wood softened by time. Some are modern and thin as a thought. Others wear carved vines and small sleeping animals. They stand like sentries in the grass, ringing the garden in a loose ellipse. She did not hire them. She did not imagine them. And yet they are there—patient, angled, catching the light.

The nearest holds her in the present—dress, veil, bouquet, breath. The next—two paces beyond—shows her younger, hair free, mouth open with some forgotten wild laughter. Another—turned a shade farther—contains no one at all, only the aisle stretching empty as if guests arrived to witness absence. In a narrow mirror leaning slightly, she thinks she sees a desk where a vase should be, paper where roses should be, a blinking cursor like a pulse. When she blinks, there is the willow again.

She keeps walking because everyone is watching and because her body knows how to do this even if her certainty does not. The ribbon on her bouquet kisses her wrist with every step—silk, silk, silk. The officiant smiles in a way that looks practiced and kind. Her father’s hand would be at her elbow if he were here. She imagines—without pain—the warm weight of it. The path curves and the mirrors reposition themselves in the corners of her eyes.

She wonders who placed them. She wonders if anyone else sees.

A child points and whispers. His mother lowers his hand gently and shakes her head. The string players reach a swell that grazes the skin—nothing ornate, nothing to distract from vows. The bow of the first violinist flashes once like a blade catching moonlight and comes smoothly down. She steps to the cadence instinctively. The scent of cedar lifts from the man waiting under the willow—his cologne, quiet and true. He shifts his weight, not impatient, just finding the posture that will let him stand without breathing too much of this moment away.

Ten steps. Nine.

A sparrow lands in the arch and looks at her, then swivels to look at him, then at the sky. The bird’s throat moves like a small motor. It lifts and goes, something learned and unlearned in one beat. The veil makes a curtain of the world, then parts to let the world back in. She could reach him now—one arm’s length, two. She feels the skin of her palm wake in anticipation. Words hover near her tongue. Time—so often a river—slows to a pane of glass.

She arrives at the step where the aisle meets the velvet runner beneath the arch, and the mirrors breathe.

The one to her left shows her standing alone under the willow with the chairs empty, ribbons untied, the arch unadorned. The one to her right shows the room of her childhood—blue wallpaper with silver stars—inside the shape of today’s frame. Another shows her in this dress but years older, an early line at the corner of her eye that tells a story no one else will see. A thin mirror near the hedgerow shows only rain, as if the storm decided not to leave after all. And beyond them—beyond all of them—she thinks she sees the back of her own head, at a desk, in an office that smells not of cedar but of printer toner and coffee gone cool.

The officiant speaks. The sound arrives as if through a wall—clear but softened. She nods when she is supposed to nod. Her mouth curves when someone’s eyes meet hers and ask for a smile. She remembers that her shoes fit, that her dress moves with her instead of fighting. She remembers how the seamstress pinned the hem and said, That’s better, as if solving a tiny equation. She remembers the night he proposed—how the ring was warm from his hand. She remembers waking at three a.m. last week with the taste of rain in her mouth though the sky was dry, the dream of water running ahead of the day like a child running downhill.

He reaches for her hand—warm, steady, that easy confidence she loves—and when his fingers touch hers the mirrors tilt as if answering a wind that hasn’t arrived yet. A ripple rolls through the garden—subtle, private, something noticed only by whatever part of her has been watching for it since morning. She thinks, Here. Here we are. She thinks, I am ready.

The world takes one long, low breath.

The sparrow’s wings beat once, twice. A ribbon at the aisle’s edge flutters without moving. The shape of the willow is written onto the sky. The first drop of rain that isn’t rain touches the back of her neck—cool as a thought, familiar without a name. She does not turn, but she feels the garden rearrange itself by a degree so small a clock would never know.

The guests are still there. The chairs are still white. The arch is still tied with the knots that mean what they mean. But somewhere inside the frame of the day, something slides—like a drawer guided back into place, like a lens moving until the light sharpens.

She hears her name and his in the officiant’s mouth, joined by and. It sounds correct, like the answer to a question written years ago and only now read aloud. She hears the music loosen into the background. She hears a child stifle a sneeze and succeed. She hears her heartbeat announce and then grow shy. She says the first word she is meant to say. It sits on her tongue and then leaves, flying out to join the common air, a small bird with her breath under it.

A mirror behind the last row shows her laughing in a kitchen that is not this house, is not any house she knows yet. Steam fogs the glass of something on the stove. A man’s jacket hangs over the back of a chair—his jacket, the cedar still there, softened by laundry and rain. Another mirror—narrow, almost mean—shows her standing at a hospital window counting the floors of the parking garage and pressing a palm to her abdomen because she is learning a new way to pray. Another shows a Christmas. Another shows a Tuesday that no one would remember but her. She wants to reach for them, every one, the way you reach for photographs when someone spreads a box on the floor and says, Look what I found.

She does not move. She is moving forward with the script of the day and the private knowledge that there is more than one script in the room.

The vows arrive like steps cut into a steep hill—each one a landing where your feet can trust the ground. She climbs. She hears him promise and believes him, not because he is incapable of lying but because he does not. She hears her own voice and recognizes that it belongs to someone who has watched herself from a distance and still chosen yes.

When the rings come—little circles carried like small moons on a ribbon—she feels a stray thread against her fingertip and thinks of all the things in a life that will need trimming and mending and patience. She slides the band onto his hand. It finds its place as if the hand had been waiting for the exact weight. The mirrors catch their hands from a dozen angles—silvered repetitions of the same intimacy—until the gesture feels like it has always existed and will go on existing whether anyone watches or not.

A wind moves through the garden and does not disturb a single program. It only grazes the mirrors and the willow leaves and the surface of her mind. The officiant’s next words lift—May—Will—Let—and with them the shape of the day lifts too, as if the ceremony has reached a pitch where it can resonate without further help.

She sees the kiss before it happens in the long mirror to her left. In the glass, they are already leaning in—two figures bending toward a point that is not halfway but shared. The future gets there first and shows her how to meet it. When their mouths finally touch, the present catches up, warm and exact.

Applause flares. Knuckles rap chair backs. Someone whistles and then stops, remembering. She laughs into his shoulder because joy needs a direction and chooses the nearest one. The violinist lets the last string sing until it decides to be silent. They turn to face the aisle as husband and wife, and the mirrors tilt again, politely, like heads in a congregation.

They walk—petals underfoot, damp and fragrant, a rain the flowers remember even when the sky has forgotten. Her dress lifts at the hem to avoid the stones that still hold little cups of sky. He squeezes her fingers and she squeezes back—once, twice—a habit they learned on their second date when words were failing for the best reasons. The arch becomes the past. The guests become a carousel of faces that will appear in pictures later with captions that will soften over time.

She tells herself: Remember this. Not the photograph of it, not the way someone else tells it later—this. The breath inside the veil. The weight of the bouquet changing hands. The precise angle of his smile when he tries not to show all his teeth. The sly thrill of the word wife arriving and choosing a seat in her body. The mirrors nodding, as if counting.

They step into the bright, and the bright steps into them. Music turns to clapping turns to the sound of a zipper somewhere in the crowd as a bag is closed on tissues and lipstick and a safety pin no one will need. The sparrow—because of course the sparrow—sweeps across the path and up to the willow and vanishes into green.

At the garden’s edge the path widens and turns. The mirrors arrange themselves to greet the new direction. She does not look away this time. She meets them as she passes, like greeting elders. In one, her face is wet though her cheeks are dry. In another, her mouth forms a word she has not said yet. In a third, she sits at a desk in an office that smells of printer toner and coffee gone cool and looks up sharply as if someone called her name. The shock of it rises—there you are—and fades into a warmth that feels like recognition without memory. She feels unafraid. She feels watched, but by a softer kind of gaze—the kind that stands at a distance and lets you make your way to it.

They round the corner where the hedges give way to a small lawn. The reception tent waits, white and patient, its lines simple, its shadows kind. The mirrors thin out here, fewer, farther apart, but still present like punctuation in a paragraph that knows it will be read aloud. The light is gentler—gold reentering from the edges of gray. He leans to murmur something at her ear and she laughs because it is silly and lovely and exactly the right size for this moment. She thinks, This is how, this is how, this is how.

Then, just before the tent, the largest mirror stands. Its frame is a braid of branches with tiny carved birds nested at intervals. Its glass is truer than the rest, truer even than water. In it, she sees not herself but the aisle again, empty—chairs, arch, ribbon—and the sky returning to rain. The image is so crisp that for a second she smells wet linen. She lifts her free hand without meaning to. Her fingertips hover an inch from the surface. He squeezes her other hand in question. She almost says, Do you see— and doesn’t.

The glass shivers without a sound. The reflection becomes her reflection—dress, veil, bouquet, breath—and then, as if a coin has been flipped and caught again, it becomes a room. A desk. A computer screen with a thin line blinking at the far right like a heartbeat trying to be patient. A mug with a ring of brown near the lip. A window with rain making soft needles of the city. The angle is not hers—it is as if someone stands where she would stand if she rose from a chair she has not yet sat in.

The word that rises is not fear. It is yes.

She lowers her hand. The mirror returns the garden without argument. He says her name and she says his and the world rearranges itself back into a wedding. They walk on, the tent receives them, the guests unfold like a chorus.

Inside, the light is a balm. Candles make small suns in glasses. The tablecloths are white without being stark. Plates mirror plates. She can feel the shape of the rest of the day without needing to see it—the first dance, the toast from the friend who will cry, the sudden quiet on the back steps when she and he step outside for air and realize the air is them.

But the mirrors do not stay behind. She has carried them with her. They hang now in the corners of the tent where there are no hooks, they lean where there is no ground. When she moves, they offer her other routes, other rooms, other faces she recognizes without knowing. She does not choose any of them. She lets them be possibilities made visible. She lets them remind her that time can be braided without breaking.

They sit. They stand. They spin. Joy makes a circle and invites them to trace it. And somewhere, far enough away not to interrupt but close enough to be true, she feels that other chair under her—the office chair with one wheel that sometimes sticks when it rolls backward—and she feels her hand settle for a moment on a keyboard that is not here. The sensation passes like a cloud over water and the surface shines again.

She thinks: Remember this. Every color, every breath, every thread of it. Hold it like glass in the palm of your hand and don’t let it fall.

The tent hums with the easy music of silver on porcelain, of chairs shifting, of conversation braided with laughter. Light spills in through the open flaps, moving across the linen like water. She sits where she’s meant to sit, in the curve of his arm, her bouquet in a vase that wasn’t there a moment ago.

The mirrors have followed.

They stand between tables, in corners, just outside the tent in the wet grass. Some catch her only in passing—no more than a sleeve, a flicker of veil. Others hold her gaze like a held breath. The nearest one shows her dancing already, though the music for it hasn’t started. Another, behind the cake table, shows her older by a handful of years—no gown, no guests—just a sweater the color of autumn leaves and a smile shaped by something unspoken.

She tells herself not to stare. She tells herself to notice the guests instead—the uncle telling his story for the third time, the bridesmaid tucking a stray hair behind her ear, the child hiding peas under his napkin. Normal things. Steady things. But her eyes keep sliding back to the glass.

When the toasts begin, the first voice is bright and certain, full of fondness. She nods, she smiles at the right places, she reaches for his hand when the story turns tender. In the mirror behind the speaker, she sees herself from another angle, her expression unreadable—listening to words she cannot hear. In the mirror beside it, the guests have vanished. Tables stand bare under a sky that has gone the color of pewter.

The second toast is warmer still, thick with memory. She laughs, feels the laugh in her ribs. In a far mirror, she sees herself with a book in her lap, reading by lamplight. Her hair is longer there, and the lamplight bends across the page to catch the band on her finger—still the same.

Between toasts, waiters move like a tide, filling glasses, clearing plates. She thanks one out of habit. He nods without looking up. In a mirror beyond his shoulder, she sees the same table—empty—its white cloth folded and gone. The grass beyond it is tall, bending in the wind.

The band begins a song she knows, and he stands, hand extended. She takes it, and the tent shifts around them like a held breath released. They move to the open space in the center, his palm warm at her waist, her fingers fitting into his as if they had always known the measure. The mirrors ring the dance floor now, crowding closer, their frames brushing shoulders.

Each mirror chooses a version—some keep to this moment, the dance swaying under soft light. Others pull at time. One shows them years from now, dancing in a small kitchen with bare feet on tile. Another shows him alone, looking out a rain-dimmed window. In one, she is laughing with a child perched on her hip, both of them moving in rhythm to music the glass cannot convey.

She leans her head to his shoulder. He says something she doesn’t catch—too low, too wrapped in the song—and she lets it go. In the mirror directly behind him, she sees herself turn and walk away, slipping through the tent flap into rain.

The song ends. Applause folds into chatter. They return to the table, but the path feels longer, as if they’ve crossed a stretch of years instead of a patch of floor. She sits, the chair exactly where she left it, the bouquet still standing in its glass. She takes a sip from her glass, and the taste is sharper than it should be—like water from a different place.

Outside, the mirrors stand in the wet grass, patient, leaning slightly as though listening.

The night pulls its edges closer, and the lights inside the tent bloom warmer in response. Shadows grow softer, guests lean in to talk over the music, and the air smells faintly of rain returning.

She rises to greet a new arrival—an old friend she hasn’t seen in years. They embrace, laugh, exchange quick words about the day. But the friend’s eyes keep flicking over her shoulder, as if something there is more pressing.

She turns. A mirror waits just beyond the tent’s entrance, frame glistening with beads of water. In it, she sees her friend—same dress, same smile—but speaking to an empty space where she herself should stand.

A ripple passes over her skin.

Conversation resumes. They part with promises to speak again before the night ends. She returns to her table, but the mirrors have closed in.

The one behind her chair now shows a street at night—wet cobblestones, lamplight pooling gold, her own reflection in a shop window. She’s holding a paper bag and looking down at it with a half-smile, as if it contains something she’s been waiting for.

Another mirror near the cake stand has fogged over. Words appear in the mist—letters backwards from her vantage—until she moves close enough to read them: Do you remember?

She blinks, and the fog clears, leaving only her face.

Music changes—something slower, deeper. She steps away from the table, drawn toward the edge of the tent. Her shoes sink slightly into the softened ground. Beyond the fabric walls, the garden has shifted—chairs gone, arch untied, petals scattered as if the wind has been busy in their absence. The mirrors remain.

She walks toward one standing alone on the lawn. Its frame is plain, unvarnished wood, and it leans slightly forward like a person eager to speak. In it, she is standing in a small, windowless room. A desk sits against one wall, a single lamp burning. Papers are spread in neat stacks, and her hands hover above a keyboard. She’s frowning—not with sadness, but with the concentration of someone holding a thought steady.

The sound of her name pulls her back. She turns—sees the groom, sees the guests, sees the tent as it was a moment ago. The air feels a little too still, as though someone has paused the breeze.

He smiles and holds out his hand again. She takes it, the world resuming with the contact.

They walk back toward the center, toward the dance floor, and the mirrors shift to make a corridor for them. In each, her reflection matches her step for step—except one.

In that one, she stops walking entirely, turns to face the glass, and places her palm against it. The version in the mirror tilts her head as if listening to something far away.

The moment breaks when they reach the others. The guests cheer for another dance. She moves as if nothing has happened, but she can still feel the cool press of that imagined glass against her hand.

The second dance ends with a flourish that feels almost rehearsed, though they never practiced. Applause spills into the aisles, and she bows her head in thanks, the veil brushing her cheek. The tent glows brighter against the deepening night, each candle a warm bead in the fabric of shadow.

Then the mirrors begin to move.

It’s not obvious at first—just a shift here, a realignment there—but she notices. Frames that had stood straight now lean toward the floor or angle themselves toward her as she passes. A few turn their faces toward the garden, showing her only their backs. Others tilt so that the reflections inside are no longer parallel to her movement, as if they’re looking into corners she can’t see.

And the images inside—

The one nearest the cake table shows her cutting it now, laughter in her mouth, while in reality she hasn’t left her chair. In another, she’s walking alone down the path to the garden gate, shoes muddy, dress hem darkened by rain.

She glances over her shoulder at the real cake table—it’s untouched, perfect, awaiting its moment. The mismatch prickles under her skin.

A large oval mirror near the head table shows her standing at a podium giving a speech, voice animated, guests leaning forward to catch every word. But here, now, she is seated, hands folded in her lap. She tests the mirror with a quick wave; the version inside doesn’t move.

She steps back.

Voices mingle around her, laughter folding over the sound of forks and music. Yet in a tall, narrow mirror near the musicians, the entire tent is empty—tables bare, candles guttered, the grass visible where the floor should be.

Her pulse quickens.

She threads her way between the tables, toward the flap of the tent. Outside, the garden has gone darker, though the sky above still holds a pale after-rain light. The arch is gone entirely now, leaving only the trampled grass where it stood. The chairs have vanished too. The mirrors remain, closer together, their frames forming a kind of barrier around the space.

She moves along the perimeter, glancing into each one:

  • Herself in the gown, but older, with a streak of silver in her hair.

  • Herself seated at a long wooden table, papers spread before her, a pen poised above a sheet.

  • Herself at a train platform, rain on her shoulders, eyes fixed on someone just out of frame.

One mirror in particular draws her—its glass smoky, as if the image is behind a veil. She leans closer. Shapes coalesce: the tent, the guests, the groom—all as they are now—but the woman in the gown is not her.

Her breath catches. The stranger in her place turns her head slowly toward the glass, and their eyes meet.

“Do you remember?” The words aren’t spoken aloud, but she hears them all the same—inside her head, behind her ribs, in the space where dreams leave their echo.

A hand on her shoulder. She turns—he’s there, smiling as though nothing has happened, asking if she’s ready for the next part of the night.

She nods. She takes his hand. And as they walk back toward the tent, the mirrors follow, closing ranks behind them, until the garden feels smaller, tighter—like a thought held so firmly it begins to press back.

They reenter the tent to the sound of silver tapping on glass—someone calling for a kiss. She laughs, the sound coming easily this time, and leans into him. The mirrors are still there, scattered between tables, but they’ve grown quiet, their images stable, familiar.

Plates arrive, carrying food she swears she ordered months ago but has never actually tasted. The scent is rich, grounding—rosemary, baked bread, the warmth of something just out of the oven.

The music turns bright again. Someone calls for the bouquet toss. She stands, smoothing the gown, and steps toward the open space at the back of the tent. Laughter rises like bubbles in champagne. For a heartbeat, she’s just another bride at her own wedding—no mirrors, no riddles—only this moment in the clean light of joy.

She turns to toss—

—and the mirrors close in.

Not with noise or movement, but with presence. Every frame in the tent and garden draws nearer, the glass brightening until it seems lit from within. Guests fade at the edges of her vision, the tent walls dissolving into shadow. All that remains are the mirrors, a circle of silver and gold and tarnish, each one angled toward her.

One by one, their images vanish into black.

All except the largest, directly ahead.

She faces it. The surface shimmers once, then clears.

It’s not the garden she sees now. Not the tent. Not the gown.

A desk. Her desk.

Papers scattered, pen set aside. The faint hum of a computer screen casting its pale light over her hands. Outside the window, rain traces familiar paths down the glass. A coffee mug sits half-full at the corner, the steam long gone.

She blinks—blinks again—and the view widens until she’s looking down at herself seated there, chin propped on one hand, eyes unfocused in the way they are when thought drifts into someplace softer.

The sound of laughter from the tent fades entirely.

Her breath deepens, steady, as the last of the wedding dissolves. The mirrors fade into nothing. The garden, the gown, the guests—gone like the echo of a bell.

She sits upright at her desk, the quiet of the office settling around her. The cursor on the screen blinks patiently, waiting.

For a long moment she does nothing, holding the day in her mind—every color, every breath, every thread of it—until it feels almost real again. Her heart is full, almost aching with the shape of what she’s seen.

It hasn’t happened yet.

But it will.

She smiles, turns back to her work, and begins to type.