“Helloo? Anybody in here?”

Marguerite is at the door, holding a reel of orange tickets. Eddie’s eyes go, as always, to her face, her olive skin, her dark coffee eyes. She has taken a job in the ticket booths this summer and she wears the official Ruby Pier uniform: a white shirt, a red vest, black stirrup pants, a red beret, and her name on a pin below her collarbone. The sight of it makes Eddie angry—especially in front of his hotshot brother.

“Show her the drill,” Joe says. He turns to Marguerite. “Its battery operated.”

Eddie squeezes. Marguerite grabs her ears.

“It’s louder than your snoring,” she says.

“Whoa-ho!” Joe yells, laughing. “Whoa-ho! She got you!”

Eddie looks down sheepishly, then sees bis wife smiling.

“Can you come outside?” she says.

Eddie waves the drill. “I’m working here.”

“Just for a minute, OK?”

Eddie stands up slowly, then follows her out the door. The sun hits his face.

“HAP-PY BIRTH-DAY, MR. ED-DIE!” a group of children scream in unison.

“Well, I’ll be,” Eddie says.

Marguerite yells, “OK, kids, put the candles on the cake!”

The children race to a vanilla sheet cake sitting on a nearby folding table. Marguerite leans toward Eddie and whispers, “I promised them you’d blow out all thirty-eight at once.”

Eddie snorts. He watches his wife organize the group. As always with Marguerite and children, his mood is lifted by her easy connection to them and dampened by her inability to bear them. One doctor said she was too nervous. Another said she had waited too long, she should have had them by age 25. In time, they ran out of money for doctors. It was what it was.

For nearly a year now, she has been talking about adoption. She went to the library. She brought home papers. Eddie said they were too old. She said, “What’s too old to a child?”

Eddie said he’d think about it.

“All right,” she yells now from the sheet cake. “Come on, Mr. Eddie! Blow them out. Oh, wait, wait …” She fishes in a bag and pulls out a camera, a complicated contraption with rods and tabs and a round flashbulb.

“Charlene let me use it. Its a Polaroid.”

Marguerite lines up the picture, Eddie over the cake, the children squeezing in around him, admiring the 38 little flames. One kid pokes Eddie and says, “Blow them all out, OK?”

Eddie looks down. The frosting is a mess, full of countless little handprints.

“I will,” Eddie says, but he is looking at his wife.

Eddie stared at the young Marguerite.

“It’s not you,” he said.

She lowered her almond basket. She smiled sadly. The tarantella was dancing behind them and the sun was fading behind a ribbon of white clouds.

“It’s not you,” Eddie said again.

The dancers yelled, “Hooheyy!” They banged tambourines.

She offered her hand. Eddie reached for it quickly, instinctively, as if grabbing for a falling object. Their fingers met and he had never felt such a sensation, as if flesh were forming over his own flesh, soft and warm and almost ticklish. She knelt down beside him.

“It’s not you,” he said.

“It is me,” she whispered.

Hooheyy!

“It’s not you, it’s not you, it’s not you,” Eddie mumbled, as he dropped his head onto her shoulder and, for the first time since his death, began to cry.

Their own wedding took place Christmas Eve on the second floor of a dimly lit Chinese restaurant called Sammy Hong’s. The owner, Sammy, agreed to rent it for that night, figuring he’d have little other business. Eddie took what cash he had left from the army and spent it on the reception—roast chicken and Chinese vegetables and port wine and a man with an accordion. The chairs for the ceremony were needed for the dinner, so once the vows were taken, the waiters asked the guests to rise, then carried the chairs downstairs to the tables. The accordion man sat on a stool. Years later, Marguerite would joke that the only thing missing from their wedding “were the bingo cards.”

When the meal was finished and some small gifts were given, a final toast was offered and the accordion man packed his case. Eddie and Marguerite left through the front door. It was raining lightly, a chilly rain, but the bride and groom walked home together, seeing as it was only a few blocks. Marguerite wore her wedding dress beneath a thick pink sweater. Eddie wore his white suit coat, the shirt pinching his neck. They held hands. They moved through pools of lamplight. Everything around them seemed buttoned up tight.

People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable. Once she’d gone, he’d let the days go stale. He put his heart to sleep.

Now, here she was again, as young as the day they were wed. “Walk with me,” she said.

Eddie tried to stand, but his bad knee buckled. She lifted him effortlessly.

“Your leg,” she said, regarding the faded scar with a tender familiarity. Then she looked up and touched the tufts of hair above his ears.

“It’s white,” she said, smiling.

Eddie couldn’t get his tongue to move. He couldn’t do much but stare. She was exactly as he remembered—more beautiful, really, for his final memories of her had been as an older, suffering woman. He stood beside her, silent, until her dark eyes narrowed and her lips crept up mischievously.

“Eddie.” She almost giggled. “Have you forgotten so fast how I used to look?”

Eddie swallowed. “I never forgot that.”

She touched his face lightly and the warmth spread through his body. She motioned to the village and the dancing guests.

“All weddings,” she said, happily. “That was my choice. A world of weddings, behind every door. Oh, Eddie, it never changes, when the groom lifts the veil, when the bride accepts the ring, the possibilities you see in their eyes, it’s the same around the world. They truly believe their love and their marriage is going to break all the records.”

She smiled. “Do you think we had that?”

Eddie didn’t know how to answer.

“We had an accordion player,” he said.

They walked from the reception and up a gravel path. The music faded to a background noise. Eddie wanted to tell her everything he had seen, everything that had happened. He wanted to ask her about every little thing and every big thing, too. He felt a churning inside him, a stop-start anxiety. He had no idea where to begin.

“You did this, too?” he finally said. “You met five people?”

She nodded.

“A different five people,” he said.

She nodded again.

“And they explained everything? And it made a difference?”

She smiled. “All the difference.” She touched his chin. “And then I waited for you.”

He studied her eyes. Her smile. He wondered if her waiting had felt like his.

“How much do you know … about me? I mean, how much do you know since …”

He still had trouble saying it.