Then it’s just the two of us in the room, which is all decked out with mirrors and makeup tables for the big day. And while I’m looking around and noticing all the special touches Amy has put in place to make sure that everything’s perfect for the wedding, I feel this sudden rush of affection for her. She’s a caring woman anyway, and I know she loves Gabby, but she’s going out of her way to make sure that Gabby knows it. She needs to feel like she belongs to a family on this day more than others. Gabby walks behind a partition that’s set up in the corner of the room, and I can hear the rustling of the dress bag her wedding gown is hanging in as she opens it. I’m not really sure what to do or say that will make her feel better, so I sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Do you need any help?” I ask, desperate to break up the silence between us.

“Not yet.” Her voice is a little shaky, and I can tell that she’s so desperately trying to keep it together.

Knowing her as well as I do, I want to tell her that it’s okay to cry. But deep down inside I know that won’t help anything. Instead I try to shift her focus to what she’s gaining in order to take it away from what she’s missing.

“You’re marrying into a really great family, Gab,” I say quietly. “They all love you so much.”

She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t really have to. I know that she is well aware of how everyone in the Wright family feels about her. Just as I’m about to run my mouth to start some kind of conversation, Gabby walks out from behind the partition with her head down, coming to a stop when she reaches the full-length mirror that’s propped against the wall.

“Will you zip me up?”

I walk over to her and slowly pull up the zipper. This dress is so Gabby: elegant and understated. Gorgeous. Classic. It’s a lovely lace and silk sheath dress with a sweetheart neckline, and the silhouette is absolutely perfect for her figure.

When the dress is zipped, I step in front of the mirror to get a good look at Gabby. The sun is shining through the window behind her and it bounces off of the mirror, casting a lovely glow over her face, and having her hair pulled back accentuates her high cheekbones and delicate features.

“Look at you,” I say quietly, smiling through the tears that are welling up in my eyes. It seems like only yesterday that the two of us played dress-up in my mom’s bedroom and pretended to be getting ready for our own weddings. And here she is, looking more beautiful than either one of us probably could’ve ever imagined. “You’re so gorgeous, Gab.”

It’s those words that finally make her cry, probably because she wishes more than anything that her mother and father were here to say them.

“I miss them, Callie,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I wish they were here.” It’s just so like her to try to hold it together, because she’s always been the kind of person who felt like she had to be strong for everyone else, and that need intensified after they died. It happened exactly one month after Gabby’s eighteenth birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan left the house all dressed up for a night at the theater, but there was a thunderstorm and the roads were slick, and Mr. Morgan swerved just a second too late…

I was spending the night at her house, and was standing next to her when she opened the front door to two police officers who were offering their condolences. I rarely left her side during the rough months that followed. That kind of experience forms a bond between two people that’s so thick that I don’t even need her to tell me what she’s going to say next. I already know, and I wish I could do something to make it come true for her.

“I’d give anything for them to be here,” she whispers.

“I know you would,” I say, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight. I struggle to find the right words to say, not wanting to offer her some trite sentiment by telling her that they’re in a better place somewhere watching over her. That kind of thinking is rarely a comfort to a person who would rather have her loved ones right here with her. “I love you,” are the words that finally leave my mouth.

She’s quiet a moment before she says, “I love you too.” It takes her a while to let go of me, and when she pulls away she’s smiling through her tears. She fans her face and quickly swipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands, and I have to smile at her. She never could handle too much emotion at once.

“Please unzip me so I can get out of this thing before I get mascara all over it.”

I laugh as I imagine the shitstorm that would follow her realizing that she had a black smudge on her pristine white dress. After I unzip her, she walks back behind the screen in the corner of the room.

“Talk to me about something that won’t make me cry,” she says, sounding a little more like herself than she did before.

“Okay,” I reply, wracking my brain to come up with another subject. I wind up saying the goofiest thing that comes to mind. “Would you still marry Ben if he sounded like a chipmunk?”

I think her laugh is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.

IT’S CLOSE to midnight when I’m driven out of my bedroom by the unrelenting thumping of a headboard against my wall. Ethan has never really been all that wild in bed, so either he’s trying to antagonize me in the tackiest way ever, or his new girlfriend is seriously rocking his world. I know that he wants me to think she is, at least. With him, anything is possible. Regardless of the reason for the late-night interruption, I don’t want to listen to it.

Since I’m not going to be able to get any sleep at this point, I might as well try to get some work done. My windows are open and the breeze floating through them is a pleasant kind of cool, so I grab my laptop and make my way outside, hoping that I’ll be able to get a wifi signal out there. I walk out onto the patio and over to the fireplace, flipping the switch that I saw Nate use to turn it on last night. The hammock hanging between the pillars on the right side of the porch practically calls to me, so I plop myself down onto it and flip open my computer.

I squint against the brightness of the screen out here in the dark, but it doesn’t take long for my eyes to adjust. Luckily I’m able to sign onto the family’s network. There are a few web development quotes in my inbox, so I take a look at my calendar to figure out if I can fit the work into my schedule. After I respond to those clients, I pull up a project that’s nearly finished. I play around with some font sizes and tweak a few colors until I’m almost satisfied with the end result.

“You gonna sleep out here?”

I’m so startled that I nearly fall out of the hammock, and manage to keep my laptop from crashing to the ground thanks to some surprisingly quick reflexes on my part. I was so lost in my work that I didn’t even hear Nate approaching.

“I’m certainly not going to now,” I say breathlessly, dramatically clutching my chest.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says with a light chuckle as he walks around the far side of the hammock. “I saw that the fireplace was on and wanted to make sure that everything was on the up and up out here.”

“In case I was a thief?” I ask, grinning.

“Thieves don’t usually sit down and make themselves comfortable, but I guess you never know.”

“Obviously a thief has never sat in this hammock.”

Nate smiles as he slides his fingertips along the ropes. “Mind if I join you? This is usually my spot when I come home, but now it’s been usurped by some…by some-”

“Stranger.”

“No,” he replies tenderly, shaking his head. “Definitely not that.”

My heart skips a beat as he looks down at me with an undercurrent of longing. Before I can second guess myself, I move over to make room for him. As he eases onto the opposite side of the hammock, he accidentally brushes my foot with his arm.