How to Talk to a Widower

summoning you all day,” she whispers, tapping her temple as she steps back into place. “Twin telepathy.”
    “Is everything okay?” the rabbi wants to know, his palm covering the microphone.
    “Perfect,” Debbie says, stepping back into her spot beside Mike.
    “I’m used to people walking out of my sermons, but when you start losing brides at their weddings, it’s probably time to consider another line of work,” Rabbi Gross jokes like an old pro, and the crowd laughs and we’re back on track. I locate my parents’ faces down in the front row smiling up at me, and I give them a small wave, feeling sweaty and exposed in the glare of the video crew’s lights. But then Mike is slipping a ring on Debbie’s finger, and she’s putting one on him, and I just watch my sister’s face as she stares up at Mike, and for the moment I am suffused in the warm glow of their unmitigated happiness. It feels like forever since I’ve felt something so simple and pure, and for the time being at least, everything else has faded to background noise.
    The wrapped glass is summarily crushed under Mike’s shoe, effectively ending the ceremony, and the guests applaud and catcall as the wedding party raucously follows the freshly minted couple up the aisle. Claire loops her arm through mine to walk slowly behind my parents, who are waving and nodding to friends as they go, and when we reach the back, Stephen is standing there, nervously wringing his hands as the crowd files past him.
    “Stephen!” my father says, stepping forward to give him a hug. “What are you doing here?”
    “Yeah, Stephen,” Claire says in a thin, sharp voice. “What are you doing here?”
    “Hi, Claire. I’m not here to bother you. Can we just go somewhere to talk for a minute?”
    “Here’s fine.”
    “I’ll leave you two alone,” I say, but Claire tightens her grip on my arm. “You stay right here.” Then she looks at Stephen and says, “Go ahead.”
    “Okay.” Stephen nervously clears his throat as the throngs meander past us, back toward the main house. “I love you, Claire,” he says. “I never stopped loving you, never stopped feeling lucky as hell to have you, but somewhere along the way I failed you. To be completely honest, I’m not exactly sure how, and this would be a much better speech if I knew, but I do know, in my heart, that I failed you, and I am truly, truly sorry for that. I’m not here to ask you for another chance, because I know how you are when you’ve made up your mind. If you’re going to divorce me, then that’s what’s going to happen, and I will make sure you’re taken care of. That’s our child you’re carrying, and I want things to be good between us so that we can at least be good parents together. But if, on the off chance, you’re having some second thoughts about all of this, then I just wanted to tell you that I want you back, and I swear to you, I swear to you, that I won’t fail you again.”
    Claire looks at him for a long moment. “I’ll just hurt you again,” she says softly.
    “It can’t be any worse than this,” he says.
    “Trust me,” she says. “It can.”
    He nods and clears his throat, and then nods some more. “Okay. Well, I said what I came to say. And, anyway, it was good to see your face again.” He looks over at me and nods. “You feel better, Doug.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You want me to send the limo back for you?”
    “Thanks anyway. My car is still here from last night.”
    “Okay, then.” He steps forward and kisses Claire’s cheek. “Good-bye, Claire. I’ll wait to hear from you.” Then he turns around and joins the crowd making their way up the lawn to the tall glass doors of the inn. Claire watches him leave, and I watch Claire.
    “What limo?” she says. “You brought him?”
    “More like he brought us.”
    “How does something like that happen?”
    “Well, he just happened to be in the room when I decided to leave the hospital, so he offered us a lift.”
    “Why would he visit you?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “Because I’m family?”
    She nods, looking up the lawn at his disappearing figure. Inside, the band has started to play “Celebration,” by Kool and the Gang, and the familiar horn riffs come floating across the lawn. “Fucking hell,” Claire says, shaking her head. “Fucking hell.”
    “Just go.”
    And then she’s off, running up the hill in her high heels, calling his name. There’s just enough time to see him