A Family Matter

by Claire Lynch

There hadn’t been time for her to live through anything that might become a story worth telling. It was in August that Dawn realized it wasn’t Hazel’s haircut, or the things she talked about, that she liked. It was the way she changed the air as she moved through it.

Both of them, she had always thought, felt gratitude more than anything else on their wedding day, a shared sense that their relationship was a shelter. Five years ago, the dress and the silk flowers had meant a license to blend in. A mortgage, a baby, all the things you needed to fill the days and years. But Dawn was a different person then, hardly a real person at all.

He wants to say, you will be so many people in your lifetime that you’ll look back one day and not even recognize some of the people you have been.

“The parts of my life have played in the wrong order. I should have met you first.”

It made me exist, being someone’s girlfriend, someone’s wife.” “That’s fair enough. You wanted to collect the set, the wedding, the house, the baby?” Dawn shrugs her shoulders. “I didn’t know you were allowed not to.”