We invited family and a handful of close friends, and we had Texas barbecue and a borrowed hall, and we endured, as gracefully as we could, the curious glances of people who did not know whether to be moved or scandalized and settled on a little of both.

Before the ceremony, my mother-in-law, Teresa, took both my hands in hers.

She had lost one son, or believed she had, and here was the other one marrying that son’s widow, and if anyone had the right to find the whole thing strange, it was Teresa.

But she only held my hands and looked at me with her steady dark eyes, so like both her sons’ eyes, and said the thing I needed to hear.

“Let people talk, Mariana,” she told me.