“Where are the other seventy-two going?”

“Nobody asked.

They’re going where they go.”

Ethan’s aunt leaned over from the next table with her napkin in her lap.

“Where are your girls?”

“They didn’t come,” I said.

“It’s a long story and a short wedding.”

She nodded as though that were an answer she had heard before, and she patted the air near my arm.