“Where I was born in India”—he raised his glass—“there is a toast at weddings, which is given just after we have sacrificed the ugliest person in the village. The full toast is ‘May the sun-dried dung of the water buffalo burn ever fragrantly on your hearth.’ But through the centuries it became simply and poignantly: ‘Fresh dung.’ So, Lew, Annie, my dear friends, “Fresh dung!” A murmur went through the hall as everyone repeated this. “Fresh dung.”

Raj sat down.

Reverend Hewitt got up. There was an audible deflation in the room.

“I will make this brief,” he said. “I lost my son, and I wondered why God had afflicted me with this.” His wife sat like the carved embodiment of Reproach beside him. “And I realized it was so that I could serve you all better, that through Alvin’s—I hesitate at this, but I’m going to say it—sacrifice, I am given to you all, truly, as a father. Our Lord lost a son. I too lost a son, and while that loss was man’s gain, so this loss is in some small way our gain. For I am rendered up to you, through the fires of grief, as His pure instrument. So I stand here proud father to Annie and to Lewis, and I extend the blessing of our Lord upon this union.” He raised his hands. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost….” Half the room murmured with him, Amen, the more drunken half, Fresh dung.

He remained with his arms out for a moment, a strange look of simpering pity playing over his face, and it seemed very much as if he were working himself up to another speech. From somewhere, someone shouted, “The cake. Cut the cake.”

The cake was hurriedly wheeled out.

Strangely enough, it was at this moment, with the two of them clutching a murderous carving knife above that ridiculously innocent cake, that it really struck Annie that she was married to Lew. All the possibilities for her future, which had drawn her like the West, were gone. She was to remain in the Midwest, neither pilgrim nor pioneer, would never see the Pacific into which the sun set. She would have a child and live in this town. Around her some of the women cried, even those in miserable marriages. A bride touched them to something profound, incorruptible, to which Annie could not connect herself: impostor.