A bit of spontaneous applause broke out when Fawn appeared, which made her blush. And then Dag wasn’t looking at anything else but her, and it all made sense again. She went and stood beside him. His right arm twitched in its sling, as though he desperately wanted to hold her hand but could not. Fawn settled for sliding her foot and hip over, so that they touched along the side, a reassuring pressure. The sense of strain in the room, of everyone trying to pretend this was all right and be nice for Fawn’s sake, almost made her want them all to revert back to their normal relaxed horribleness, but not quite.

Shep Sower stepped forth, smiled, cleared his throat, and called them all to attention with a few brief, practiced words. To Fawn’s relief, he glanced at Dag and skipped over his usual dire wedding jokes, which everyone else here had likely heard often enough to recite themselves anyhow. He then read out the marriage contract; the older generation listened with attention, nodding judiciously or raising eyebrows and exchanging glances now and then. Dag, Fawn, her parents, the three adult couples, and Fletch and Clover all signed it, Nattie made her mark, and Shep signed and sealed it all.

Then Papa brought out the family book and laid it open on the table, and much the same exercise was repeated. Dag stared curiously over Fawn’s shoulder at the pages, and she thumbed back a bit through the entries of births, deaths, and marriages and land swaps, purchases, or inheritances to silently point out her own birth note and, several pages earlier, the note of her own parents’ wedding, with the names and countersigned marks of the witnesses—many long dead, a few still right here in this same room doing this same task.