They continued walking, and after enough time had passed Jesse finally opened up about the past decade of his life. He’d lived in Louisiana for the first couple of years. Made an okay living as a derrickhand on one of the oil rigs out on the water. His uncle Ray got sick with cancer and he came back to take care of him. It was around that time when Alden Jones came wanting to buy a bunch of the property in the area.

“I told Ray not to do it, but he had a lot of medical bills. Jones offered more than the house would ever have been worth anyway, so he took it and paid off his debt. What little was left he gave to me after he died. That was over two years ago. I worked a bunch of odd jobs after until I got the one here.”

“You work here? At this place?”

“I’m one of the field hands. I also keep the grounds.”

Jesse said it so matter-of-factly. Like it meant nothing. After everything, he was working at the place that had altered his life. Did it haunt him to see it every day and know what this place had become? She couldn’t bring herself to ask, not yet, and so she asked another. “Jesse, you still haven’t told me why you’re here for the wedding. I gave you my reason. What’s yours?”

“Can’t I just have wanted to see what it was all about? Celine—she was always going to do what she wanted, whether or not I said anything, whether or not she thought it was right. You saw that firsthand earlier. Me being here wasn’t going to change any of it.”

“I would have thought you’d want to avoid it.”

“Maybe I got other reasons.” Jesse rubbed the back of his neck, a gesture he did when he’d gone too far in saying what he shouldn’t. “I don’t want to talk about Celine anymore,” he continued, cutting Mira off before she could ask. “Tell me how you’ve been. What you’re doing now.”

“Well, I teach,” Mira said, laughing a little. “High school. Language arts classes.”

“How is it?”

“Not what I expected, but then, what ever is?”

“A teacher, huh?” Jesse said. Mira could tell he was trying to picture it—her in the classroom in her blouse and trousers, hair in a loose side bun, her heels clicking against the tile floor as she walked around the classroom. “I don’t remember any of my teachers looking like you.”

“We usually don’t wear cocktail dresses.”

“True, true,” he said, nodding. “Maybe I would have been a better student.”

“From what I remember your grades weren’t bad.”

“They could have always been better.”