When they drove up to the church they were already rushed. “Why does the car smell of wet dog?” he asked, and Sadie thought, Was that today? It seemed like weeks ago. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him the story, which she knew would delight him; it had slipped her mind.

She parked the car.

“Remember the emergency brake,” he told her.

“I always do,” she said, though she’d forgotten.

Inside the church they were hustled up to a front pew by a Dutch person in a red denim blazer. Nobody had to ask bride’s side or groom’s: the English were the ones in floral prints and hats and morning suits, and the Dutch were the ones in long braids and primary colors. Sadie turned to see if she could pick out Lottie among the guests, but all she could see were hats, an armada of them.

The wedding, being a wedding, passed without incident.

Afterward, they had drinks in the check-floored foyer of the house, with plates of pâté and toast handed around. The tempera paint on the walls rubbed off on people’s clothing. The twins’ hands were blue. Shithead’s port side was green. The guests who got too close to the yellow walls came away looking pollinated.

“My mother would hate this,” said Jack. “Better she stayed at home.”

“Do you like weddings?” said Sadie.

“No,” he said. Then, “Lucky for us we’re already married.”

Sadie laughed ruefully.

“That drunk guy,” said Jack. “From the bar. Our first date. Didn’t he pronounce us man and wife?”

“I don’t think he was credentialed.”

“He might have been a ship captain. Do you like weddings?”

She thought about it. The answer was no, but she thought she might like marriage.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re all right. No,” she said. “No. I don’t.”

“I didn’t think so.”

She was crying then.

“Oh no!” he said, startled. “No! What’s the matter?”

The matter was she felt, all of a sudden, the force of his family, and understood them as quicksand, and didn’t know whether she should get herself out or try to rescue both of them. Eloise, the father, even darling Fiona, even Katie’s twin sons, Thomas and Robin, with their Rod Stewart haircuts and old-man outfits that matched everyone in the family. She’d understood matching clothing—tracksuits, Disneyland sweatshirts, striped pajamas—as a particularly American insanity. She didn’t like the international version any better.

“I’ll ask you one of these days,” he said, fond and irritated. “When I get some things straightened out.”

She was astonished he understood so little.