The wedding was small.
Ben wore a gray suit and cried when Rosie walked down the aisle.
She wore a simple white dress with lace sleeves and carried daisies because she said roses looked too serious.
Our parents smiled through the entire ceremony.
Afterward, my father patted Ben on the shoulder.
“You chose well.”
The words bothered me, though I could not explain why.
They sounded less like a father welcoming a son-in-law and more like a businessman approving a transaction.
I watched Ben slide the ring onto Rosie’s finger.
For the first time in my life, I wondered whether I had ever really known my best friend.
Three years passed.
My hurt slowly softened.
I met a thoughtful, patient man named Daniel, and for the first time, I understood that what I had felt for Ben was partly love and partly the certainty of childhood.
Rosie and Ben moved into a small yellow house near the edge of town.
Every morning at nine, Rosie called me.
Sometimes she told me what she was wearing.
Sometimes she described what Ben had made for breakfast.
Sometimes she simply wanted to hear my voice.
Then came the call we had all once believed might never happen.
“I’m going to be a mom,” she whispered.
I sat upright.
“What?”
“We’re having twins.”
I slid onto the floor of my apartment, laughing and crying at the same time.
All Rosie’s life, people had told her what she would never be able to do.
She would never live independently.
She would never marry.
She would never build a family.
Now she was going to become a mother.
But the pregnancy quickly became complicated.
Rosie developed dangerously high blood pressure. She was monitored constantly, placed on bed rest, and admitted to the hospital twice before the third trimester ended.
At thirty-four weeks, Ben called me before dawn.
“Something’s wrong.”
