When I got back to the tent, I told Kenzie what he’d said. All of it. Even the part about Corbin.
She was quiet. Then she stood up, smoothed her dress, and said, “He can stay. In the back. He doesn’t come up front, he doesn’t talk to me, and he doesn’t make a scene.”
“And who’s walking you?”
She smiled for the first time in twenty minutes, and it was shaky, but it was real.
“Same guy as before,” she said.
So that’s what happened. The music started a little after three-thirty. Corbin held his arm out exactly the way we’d practiced in the living room, elbow bent, chin up. He walked her across that big green lawn, counting under his breath so he wouldn’t go too fast. When the pastor asked, “Who gives this woman to be married?” Corbin said, loud and clear, “I do. Her friend Corbin.” Then, because he can never leave things alone, he added, “She taught me how to talk. Be nice to her, Nate.”
