A person can kiss a child’s head for a father’s benefit in the morning and lock that same child in a service room by afternoon, and the two acts are not a contradiction to such a person; they are simply two different tools, used on two different audiences, toward the same end.

That morning I saw the tool meant for me.

I did not see the one meant for Hannah.

That is the whole tragedy of it in a single day.

Chapter 5 — The Empty Seat

Not long before the ceremony was to begin, my sister Patricia came into the room where I was waiting and asked, lightly, whether Hannah had already gone out to take her place with the wedding party.

I assumed she had, that she was out front somewhere having her picture taken by the photographer, doing the happy busy things a flower girl does in the last minutes before a wedding.