And for that hour, in the warm light, surrounded by my daughters and the good man marrying the eldest of them, everything felt peaceful, and whole, and almost ordinary, the way I imagine other families feel all the time and mine so rarely had.

I want to hold onto that hour in the telling, before I go on to what came after, because it matters that it existed.

Whatever else happened that day, and a great deal was about to, there was first this: an hour in which my daughter married a man who loved her, surrounded by her sisters and her father, and her mother’s presence could not touch it.

That hour was ours.