I realized suddenly that this sense of home was why I had been willing to make all those fourteen-hour round-trips here rather than choose a church in North Carolina. I wondered how many things Sébastien didn’t fully realize and couldn’t articulate, how many unnamed layers of richness and belonging like this church were behind some of his needs for France.

The French and other guests new to the church didn’t see peacocks and Irish wolfhounds, but they still saw a long country road and then, framing the entrance to the church, Stone Mountain granite and giant magnolias, in bloom for the wedding. The far side of one of those magnolias was bare, since one of my brothers had plundered it when we ran short of flowers in the church hall, but that was our little secret. From the parking lot, guests could only see white flowers against glossy thick green leaves and catch whiffs of sweet scent when a breeze stirred the stifling air. Green slopes curved down and up again on either side, the valley and hill of the cemetery to the left and the donkey’s old grounds to the right.

Inside the granite church, pine rafters warmed, and sun filtered through stained glass so rich and beautiful it looked as if it didn’t belong here. The windows, created by one of my father’s closest friends, outshone the whole church. Red carpet stretched all around us, which I, used now to the stone floors in Europe, found a little tacky and which the French, used to stone floors in Europe, loved. The ceremony flowed without a hitch. Claudine, all pretty in pink and still thinner than I despite my corset, proudly walked her son down the aisle; my mother, regal as a beaming Queen Elizabeth could be, walked me.

My father gave a homily about strawberries. “Boy, your father has got you pegged,” Sébastien whispered. “If anyone wants to hold your attention, talk about food.”