I pictured her at twenty-six, trying to translate dread into the language of gratitude. I knew the Amy who hated disappointing a waiter, who once ate a meal she hadn't ordered because the kitchen looked busy and she didn't want to make more work. I'd loved that gentleness for years while sometimes worrying that it cost her more than she admitted. At the table, for the first time, I saw how far back the habit reached. My jealousy did not vanish, but a larger tenderness began moving beneath it.
The wedding preparations took over her life. There were venue appointments and fittings, cake tastings and guest lists, floral arrangements and arguments about whether Peter's college roommate should be permitted a guest. Amy's old friends teased her for caring too much about centerpieces, not realizing she cared very little about them at all. She began waking at four in the morning with her heart pounding, convinced she'd forgotten something essential. At work, she opened documents without reading them and found herself staring at the space between paragraphs.
Her sister noticed first. Caroline arrived one evening with grocery-store ice cream and found Amy sitting on the kitchen floor beside a box of sample invitations. When Caroline asked whether she was happy, Amy said yes so fast that the answer made them both look up. Caroline sat down next to her, passed over a spoon, and waited. Eventually Amy admitted that she didn't know whether she wanted to be married or merely wanted the worrying to end.
"Caroline told me I could stop," Amy said. "She said a wedding wasn't a train I'd boarded and lost the right to leave. But I heard her, and I still couldn't imagine saying no to all those people." She took a breath. "I thought if I ended the engagement, I'd be proving everyone right about me being selfish and incapable of commitment. I was more afraid of their judgment than I was of the marriage itself."
Three weeks before the ceremony, she attended a final meeting at the wedding venue. The coordinator showed her where she would enter, where the musicians would stand, and how the photographer could take advantage of the late afternoon light. When Amy stood at the door of the empty ceremony room, she felt a sudden certainty that she could not walk through it. She said she needed the restroom and went outside instead, where she sat on a low stone wall and cried until her face hurt. Her dress was at the tailor. The invitations had been mailed. There was still time to save herself, but not enough time to save everyone from disappointment.