Miles did not give a speech. He asked his bride one question: whether she wanted to be married in that room. She said no. They were married eleven days later in a county office with six people present, and I signed as a witness, which is the only document with my name on it that I have ever framed.
The expensive part of Bennett’s mistake was not the wedding. His firm had been courting the design practice Miles worked for, a partnership eighteen months in the making, and Miles withdrew from it on Monday morning in a two-line email. It cost him money too. He never mentioned the figure and I never asked.
Bennett and Seraphine did not speak for two years. Then her son was born, and he came, and he was careful, and he has stayed careful. He shook my hand in a hospital corridor in a way that was not an apology and was not nothing. I took it. I am fifty-one years old and I have learned that most repair arrives sideways or not at all.
