My mom called out, “I told her she could cut it.”
Claire looked horrified. “It just didn’t seem right to do that.”
That made everyone laugh again.
Even me.
Claire squeezed my hand.
“I put it on as a joke at first. It looked ridiculous.”
“It still does,” Aaron muttered.
Claire pointed at him. “Thank you, Aaron.”
Then she looked at me again.
“But when I saw myself in the mirror, I thought about you.”
Her voice softened.
“You’ve spent this entire wedding pretending you weren’t sad your dad couldn’t be here.”
I swallowed. “I wasn’t pretending.”
“Really?”
“Okay. Maybe a little.”
“You barely talked about it.”
“I didn’t want everything to become depressing.”
“I know.”
She took a breath.
“And I know nobody can replace him. I wasn’t trying to do that.”
I looked again at the writing inside the cuff.
Richard’s Wedding Suit.
Then the little stitched Danny beneath it.
