"Yes, ma'am," I said. "And I plan to be there."
We left for the church while the machinery was still working. I made one final call to Marlo from the driveway and confirmed that the deputy was documenting the scene, the county had been alerted, and nobody should cross the taped-off working area. She told me an engineering specialist was on the way, though not before the contractor's scheduled work might be complete. I handed Dalton the spare camera battery and asked him to keep the photographs organized by time.
"Zeke," he said, "I've got this. Go take care of your girl."
At the church, a hundred and fifty guests accomplished what Cordelia's well-funded legal team could not: they helped one another without asking who had the authority to do it. Two women from Willowbrook arranged flowers along the folding tables. A cousin who repaired sound systems set up a microphone, and Savannah appeared carrying an iron and a box of safety pins. Nobody cared whether the chairs matched or whether the cake had been designed for the church basement's lighting.
At eleven fifteen, I stood at the end of the aisle with Autumn's hand in the crook of my arm. Father Benedict had placed Lillian's photograph beside a small white candle, and Nolan waited at the front with Avery and Micah standing near him. Autumn's boots were still visible beneath her dress. When the music began, I felt the first tears I had allowed myself that morning.
"Are you thinking about the dam?" she whispered.
"No," I lied.
She squeezed my arm. "Mom would be laughing at my boots."
"Your mother would have bought you better boots. And then she'd have worn them herself."
Autumn laughed softly. For a few steps, with everyone we loved standing around us, Cordelia Blackthornne no longer occupied the center of my mind. I watched Nolan take Autumn's hand and saw the future opening in front of her, stubbornly and beautifully, even while something old and precious was being destroyed miles away.
The ceremony was imperfect in every ordinary sense. The microphone failed briefly, Micah dropped the ring pillow and cried with embarrassment, and Father Benedict had to pause while someone brought him a new page of the readings that had gone missing in the move. But when Autumn and Nolan spoke their vows, the room held a kind of attention no carefully landscaped creekside setting could have improved. The people who loved them were there, and that was the one thing Cordelia could not bulldoze.
During the reception, messages began arriving from Dalton and other guests who had remained near the property. The equipment had stopped before ten thirty, roughly four hours after the work began. The old control structure was gone, its stones scattered across the disturbed channel. Water that had previously released through the narrow, stable spillway was cutting through the freshly exposed banks and carrying debris toward Willowbrook's drainage inlets.