ABonetoPick

In less than a year, I went to three weddings and one funeral. By late May (at the second wedding but before the funeral) I had decided it was going to be the worst year of my life. The second wedding was actually a happy one from my point of view, but my smile muscles ached all the next day from the anxious grin I’d forced to my lips. Being the daughter of the bride felt pretty peculiar. My mother and her fiancé strolled between the folding chairs arranged in her living room, ended up before the handsome Episcopalian priest, and Aida Brattle Teagarden became Mrs. John Queensland. In the oddest way, I felt my parents had left home while I had stayed. My father and his second wife, with my half brother Phillip, had moved across the country toCaliforniain the past year. Now my mother, though she’d still be living in the same town, would definitely have new priorities. That would be a relief. So I beamed at John Queensland’s married sons and their spouses. One of the wives was pregnant—my mother would be a step grandmother! I smiled graciously at Lawrenceton’s new Episcopal priest, Aubrey Scott. I oozed goodwill at the real......