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I thought about the photograph.
“The wedding dress.”Rent Evening Dresses
Daniel closed his eyes.
“That picture was taken that morning.”
Before the crash.
Before everything changed.
I looked at him.
“So your brothers call me your second wife because you almost married Joanna?”
Daniel opened his eyes.
“No.”
My stomach tightened again.
“Then why?”
He looked toward the VHS.
“Because we did.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Not legally.”
I stared at him.
Mark quietly moved toward the television cabinet.
There was an old VCR inside.
I had forgotten we still owned it.
Daniel nodded.
“Put the tape in.”
The machine groaned.
Static filled the screen.
Then the picture appeared.
A hospital room.
The camera shook slightly.
Young Daniel stood beside a bed.
Twenty-five years old.
Terrified.
Holding someone’s hand.
Joanna.
Her hair had been shaved on one side.
Bandages covered part of her head.
She looked exhausted.
Fragile.
But she was smiling.
A man stood beside the bed holding a Bible.
Two nurses stood near the wall.
I turned toward Daniel.
“What am I watching?”
He didn’t look at me.
“A wedding.”
My whole body went cold.
“You said she wasn’t your wife.”
“Legally, she wasn’t.”
On the television, the man with the Bible began speaking.
There were no flowers.
No wedding guests.
No music.
No white dress.
Just a hospital bed.
A frightened young man.
A badly injured young woman.
And two nurses trying not to cry.
Daniel whispered:
“She asked me.”
I stared at the screen.
“She knew she might not recover?”
“Yes.”
“And you agreed?”
“Immediately.”
“Why wasn’t it legal?”
“We didn’t have a marriage license.”
His voice shook.
“Nothing had been filed. The minister told us he could perform a blessing and vows, but the state wouldn’t recognize it.”
“But you considered yourselves married.”
Daniel finally looked at me.
“Yes.”
Suddenly, twenty years of jokes made sense.
Anything for the second wife.
I wasn’t legally his second wife.
But to the twenty-five-year-old man on that television, Joanna had been his first.
Then I noticed the pendant.
Even through the grainy VHS picture, I recognized it.
The same small gold pendant Daniel had given me.
My hand went instinctively to my throat.
“What happened to her?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“She died six days later.”
I couldn’t speak.
The anger I’d carried since dinner didn’t disappear.