And now those same six daughters stood around me in a circle of light, and took the weight into their own hands, and for the first time in fifteen years, I did not feel like I was standing alone.

I felt, at last, like a man surrounded by his family, which is exactly what I was, and exactly what, it turned out, I had been all along.

In the weeks after the wedding, I found myself lighter in a way I had not been in fifteen years, and it took me some time to understand why, because nothing material had changed.

Laura was still gone.