Chapter 7: The Photograph Over the Fireplace
We ordered the album six weeks after the wedding.
I chose the cover image myself.
The aisle shot — Nathan in the foreground, shoulders back, the church stretching behind him, the light through the windows.
The photographer had done something with the framing that made it feel timeless, like a photograph that could have been taken in any decade.
Like a photograph that would still mean something in forty years.
Daniel looked over my shoulder while I finalized the order.
"That's the one," he said.
"I know."
The album arrived on a Tuesday.
We sat on the sofa and went through it together, slowly, the way you go through something you want to remember going through.
Daniel stopped on certain pages longer than others.
He stopped longest on the one with Nathan and Mom on the dance floor — Nathan concentrating on his feet, Mom laughing, the string lights above them.
"He practiced," I told Daniel.
"Mom taught him a step so he wouldn't embarrass me."
Daniel looked at the photograph.
"He told me," he said quietly.
"The morning of the wedding.
He pulled me aside and said, 'I practiced so I can do it properly.' He was very serious about it."
"He's always serious about the important parts."
"I know." He turned the page.
"He's going to be a good uncle."
I looked at him.
He was still looking at the album.
"That's a very large statement," I said.
"I know." He turned another page.
"I've been thinking about it."
I didn't say anything.
Outside, the afternoon light was going gold through the front windows.
We reached the end of the album.
Daniel closed it and set it on the coffee table.
"Mom asked if she could see it," he said.
"When it came."
"I know.
She texted me."
He looked at me.
"What did you say?"
"I told her she was welcome to come over."
He was quiet for a moment.
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know."
"She doesn't deserve—"
"It's not about what she deserves," I said.
"It's about what kind of people we want to be." I looked at the album on the table.
"And it's about Nathan.
If she's going to be in his life — in our life — then I'd rather she understands what she's looking at when she looks at him."
Daniel was quiet for a long time.
"When did you get so calm about all of this?" he said finally.
"I'm not calm," I said.
"I'm just done being angry at people who are still learning."
He looked at me.
"She said something at the end of that conversation," I said.
"When she was leaving.
She stopped in the hallway and she said — 'I had a brother once.
He d*ed when we were young.
He was different too, in his way.
I don't talk about him.' And then she left."
Daniel went very still.
"You never told me that," he said.
"She told me not to." I paused.
"I think she needed to say it to someone.
I think she's been carrying it for a long time and it came out sideways.
That doesn't excuse what she said.
But it explains something."
He stood up.
Walked to the window.
Stood there with his back to me.
"Why didn't she ever tell me?"
"I don't know.
You'd have to ask her."
He turned around.
His face was doing the thing it had done at the altar — trying to hold.
"She's not easy," he said.
"No."
"She may never be easy."
"Probably not."
He came back to the sofa.
Sat down.
Picked up the album and held it without opening it.
"Nathan asked me last week if he could be godfather," he said.
"When we have kids.
He said, 'I want to be the one who teaches them things.' He had a whole list.
Fishing.
Card games.
How to whistle properly."
I laughed.
It came out before I could stop it — a real laugh, the kind that starts in your chest.
"He already told me," I said.
"He made me promise."
Daniel smiled.
It was the first full smile I had seen from him in weeks — not the managed smile of a man navigating difficult family dynamics, but the real one.
"Your dad would have loved him even more as he got older," Daniel said.
"I think about that sometimes.
How much more there was to know."
The light through the windows had gone from gold to the soft grey of early evening.
"Me too," I said.
We hung the aisle photograph above the fireplace that weekend.
Daniel held it level while I stepped back to check.
"Higher on the left," I said.
He adjusted.
"There."
He stepped back beside me.
We looked at it together — Nathan in his matching suit, the church behind him, the light.
May you like
"There he is," Daniel said quietly.
"There he is," I said.
