So my wedding—and everything that had led up to it—the miracle of meeting Edward Hunter, and falling so madly in love with him, and being swept off my feet in a way I'd never expected or believed could happen—was a resurrection of sorts. A rising from the dead, of a little girl who went down to the bottom of the Irish Sea with her parents, twenty-seven years earlier.

Edward. He seemed to love me with everything he had, not wanting to let me out of his sight. His expression, his embrace, his presence—all had the intensity of a hurricane lamp turned up high. And when he poured that light on me, I was transfixed.

He was just over five-eight, but since I'm just under five-two, I had to stand on tiptoes to kiss him. A rugby player at Harvard, he was broad-shouldered and muscular. His red Saab bore three stickers: Harvard University, Columbia Business School, and a bumper sticker that said Rugby Players Eat Their Dead. The joke was, Edward was so gentle, I couldn't even imagine him playing such a rough sport.

When I go back to our wedding day, I see his red car parked in the road up at the top of the stone steps, behind the rose-and-ivy-covered wishing well. I can see the graceful arch curving over the well—with Sea Garden, the name of my grandmother's cottage, forged in wrought iron back when my great-grandfather was still alive—the black letters rusting away in the salt air even back then, twelve years ago. I remember the moment so well: standing there in my grandmother's yard, knowing that soon I would drive away with Edward in that red car—that I would be his wife, and we would be off on our honeymoon.

Can I say now, for certain, that I looked at that iron arch and saw the corroding letters as a reminder that even that which is most beautiful, intended to endure forever, can be corrupted or destroyed? No, I can't. But I do remember that the sight of it gave me my first cold feeling of the day.

My grandmother and Clara Littlefield—her next-door neighbor and best friend from childhood—had gone all out to make my wedding a dream come true. The yellow-and-white-striped tent stood in the side yard between their houses, on the very tip of Hubbard's Point, jutting proudly into Long Island Sound. Tables with long golden-cream tablecloths were scattered around, all decorated with flowers from the garden. A string quartet from the Hartt School of Music, in Hartford, played Vivaldi. My friends were in their summer best—bright sundresses, straw hats, blue blazers.