She said: “I’d prepared for the woman in the story.

I’d prepared for that woman for four months.

I had not prepared for a tired person.”

Part Nineteen: A Hundred and Fifty-One People

They got married at four o’clock under an oak on a slope with the valley going brown behind them, and I walked her down, and I did not cry until about eleven seconds in, which was nine seconds longer than the over-under Solveig had been running.

Manny’s father did the reading.