On a July Sunday morning, Nora and Em and I were ahead of the brunch crowd. Our rehearsal-dinner guests were sleeping in or having room service. The sophisticated little Barlows struck me as a couple attuned to room service. Like some other Norwegians I would later know, the North Conway contingent were hearty drinkers—they were definitely sleeping in. The girly-girl blondes were no doubt hiding themselves from Nora and Em.

The three of us were virtually alone in the dining room of the inn, where we were relieved not to see the twice-stricken waitress of the night before—the impressionable young woman who’d been dropped to her knees, first by Em’s orgasm, then by Henrik’s cupcake. I hoped the much-abused waitress was sleeping in, if she wasn’t already in therapy.

Our only companion in the dining room was the solitary Austrian musician. He’d brought his zither to breakfast, where we feared he might start strumming the strings. The lederhosen and the Tyrolean hat made us think the Austrian was fanatical—maybe he couldn’t go for as long as an hour without playing “The Third Man Theme” to himself. His waiter, an older man, had removed the place setting opposite him. Thus the beloved instrument was in reach across the table from the musician, though he not once touched it or spoke to it. They sat together without a word between them. They resembled an elderly, long-married couple—devoted to each other without conversation. I knew we still had to get through the “Bridal Chorus” on a zither, but I was overlooking what else might be Wagnerian about my mom’s marriage ceremony or its immediate aftermath.

At fourteen, I lacked the perspective to see our suddenly expanding Brewster family in comparison to other families. Given the dramatic effects on our rehearsal dinner caused by Em’s enduring orgasm and Henrik’s cupcake missile, I was naïve to imagine that my mother’s wedding could be anticlimactic. Considering what happened with Nora and Em after our breakfast, I should have known the day ahead would be no less awkward.

Nora—in the act of paying our waiter, the older man—spoke to me (almost casually) while she was looking at Em. “About the snowshoer kiss, as you call it, Adam—Em and I have had a hard time visualizing it, for more than a year.” I was further disconcerted by Em’s frown, and the way she nervously nodded her head. I couldn’t look at her, or at Nora. “We just can’t see it, kiddo,” Nora told me, taking my hand. “If we go upstairs to our room, maybe you can show us.”