Margot spent all morning asking when she could stand beside her father for wedding pictures.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandpa, do I stand next to Daddy or Claire?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably both, sweetheart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood. I\u2019m going to smile with all my teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou only have twenty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know. That\u2019s all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She laughed and ran toward the photographer, her pink flower-girl dress swishing around her knees. Across the room, Claire was having her makeup touched up. When Margot approached with a rose petal shaped like a heart, Claire barely looked at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot now, honey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Margot stopped. A few minutes later, the photographer called Claire over. Claire immediately smiled, fixed Margot\u2019s bow, bent beside her, and posed for the camera. \u201cBeautiful,\u201d the photographer said. Margot beamed. For two years, I had seen photographs like that and believed they meant something.<\/p>\n
By sixty-eight, I had already buried my wife and my only daughter. Phoebe died in a car accident when Margot was two. After that, Emmett stopped feeling like my former son-in-law. He was family. I helped with preschool pickups, watched Margot when he worked late, and told her stories about her mother whenever she asked. When Emmett met Claire, I wanted their marriage to work. Maybe I needed it to.<\/p>\n
An hour before the ceremony, Margot asked again about the family pictures. Twenty minutes later, I heard her and Claire near the bridal room. \u201cBut Daddy said we\u2019d take pictures.\u201d Claire sighed. \u201cListen to me. You\u2019re not the most important girl in your dad\u2019s life anymore. Stay out of the family photos. Today is about your dad and me. Unless somebody specifically asks for you, leave the pictures alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I found Margot sitting alone afterward, twisting the pink ribbon on her flower basket. \u201cWhat happened, sweetheart?\u201d I asked. She stared at the floor. \u201cClaire says I\u2019m not Daddy\u2019s important girl anymore.\u201d Then she whispered, \u201cShe says I make the pictures look like before.\u201d \u201cBefore what?\u201d I asked. \u201cBefore her.\u201d She leaned against me. \u201cCan I stay with you?\u201d \u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the reception, I abandoned the speech I had prepared. When my name was called, I stood and told everyone what Margot had been told. The room went silent. I looked at Emmett. \u201cBefore anybody takes another family picture tonight, ask your daughter why she thinks she isn\u2019t supposed to be in it.\u201d Emmett took Margot into a side room. A few minutes later, he called me inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell Grandpa what you told me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Margot looked up. \u201cI like Picture Claire.\u201d We stared at her. \u201cWho\u2019s Picture Claire?\u201d I asked. \u201cClaire when people take pictures,\u201d she explained. \u201cShe\u2019s nicer.\u201d Then she told us Claire played with her when guests were around, fixed her hair when friends visited, and smiled for photographs. When nobody was watching, she told Margot to ask her father for things. Emmett looked devastated. \u201cHow did I miss this?\u201d I answered honestly. \u201cThe same way I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
That night, Emmett confronted Claire. She finally admitted that she felt Phoebe\u2019s presence everywhere\u2014through Margot, through the family stories, through the memories she could never compete with. She wanted one day that felt like hers. But Emmett told her, \u201cYou didn\u2019t marry me without her.\u201d Then he took Margot\u2019s hand. \u201cCome on, sweetheart. We\u2019re going home.\u201d Margot blinked. \u201cBut there\u2019s cake.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll get you cake.\u201d \u201cTwo pieces?\u201d \u201cThree,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
A month later, the marriage was over. I visited Emmett one evening and found Margot drawing at the kitchen table. She had made a picture of a dinosaur birthday party. Emmett put it on the refrigerator with a magnet. One corner began to curl away. He noticed, pressed it flat, and returned to making dinner. I watched him and realized that love isn\u2019t always found in the photographs people pose for. Sometimes it is found in the quiet moments when nobody is watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Margot spent all morning asking when she could stand beside her father for wedding pictures. \u201cGrandpa, do I stand next to Daddy or Claire?\u201d \u201cProbably both, sweetheart.\u201d… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10330,"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions\/10330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbdc.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}