“You did?” Emily asked, too surprised to say anything else.
“I did,” Rob affirmed. “And now we’re in the third movement, the scherzo, and you inspired the song that put me on the map. I want you here with me, in the third movement.”
She looked at him, his eyes were intense, looking right at her.
“And then we can write the fourth movement together,” he said.
“Of your career?” she asked, sliding into psychologist mode, clarifying, making sure she knew what the subtext was.
“Of anything,” Rob answered. “My career or . . . anything.”
Emily thought about Rob’s analogy, about what the motif of her own symphony would be. It wouldn’t be him, she was sure of that. But it wouldn’t be Ezra, either. It would be, she decided, loss. The loss of her mother, of her first child, of Rob, of music, of her dad, in a way. Loss was what propelled her to follow the path she did, to become a therapist, to connect with Ezra. But now two of the things she’d lost were being returned to her. What did that mean for her fourth movement?
xxxi
Ezra and I got married! Last week! I felt like I should let you know. Or do you somehow already know? Your grandfather’s wife had too much chardonnay and told me that my mom was watching me, looking down on the moment, and I rolled my eyes and walked away from her. Because how does she know? How does anyone know what happens afterward? What happened to your grandmother? What happened to you?
I wonder sometimes if souls really can be reborn, like Ari suggested when you were inside me. Were you reborn as someone else’s child? Will you come back to me if Ezra and I have a baby together? Or is it over for you? Has your story been told, the ending complete? And that’s it?
In graduate school I read about psychiatric patients who believed that they had lived past lives. The details they knew were so specific, it was hard to come up with other ways to explain the phenomenon. But if souls are recycled like that, then it’s possible your grandmother’s soul was already recycled, in which case she wouldn’t be watching our wedding. You, either.
* * *
—
We had a really small wedding, a really quiet one, not like Ari and Jack’s black-tie extravaganza. Your grandfather offered to pay, which actually surprised me, since his life in Santa Fe seems to have somehow eclipsed his life as Ari’s and my father. We hardly ever see him, now that he moved. And we talk about once a month—but the conversations aren’t real. They seem more out of duty than out of a real desire to connect. But I’ve always had Ari. And now I have Ezra.
Ezra and I had talked about your grandfather’s offer, and we decided that we wanted to basically elope with our families. So I asked your grandfather if he would rent us all a huge house on the Riviera Maya for Memorial Day weekend and fly his rabbi down to marry us.
He said he’d pay for everyone’s flights, too, since it would still be less expensive than Ari’s wedding. So that’s what we did. Though Ezra’s parents insisted on paying for their own flights. And a chef, too.
It was so beautiful. We got married on the beach, under a canopy, behind this gorgeous house that had a swimming pool and palm trees with hammocks and swings hanging between them. It was called Villa Corazón, which is part of the reason we chose it. With the chef there all weekend, no one had to cook. And Ezra and I wrote our own vows—one set of vows that we would share, words that we would each vow to the other.
We vowed to love, honor, and respect each other always.
We vowed to choose each other, every morning, every afternoon, and every night.
We vowed to support each other in the hard times and in the wonderful ones.
And we vowed to do all we could to give each other our best selves until the end of our days.
Then, feeling the sand under my bare feet, I stepped forward so he could slide a ring on my finger and declare, “By this ring, you are consecrated to me as my wife by the laws of Moses and Israel.”
And then I slipped a ring on his finger, saying, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”
The rabbi read our Ketubah aloud, and then our parents and Ari and Jack and their kids each came forward to bestow one of the seven blessings upon us. After that, Ezra slipped a shoe on his right foot—a shoe he’d brought down to the beach just for this purpose—and smashed a glass we’d wrapped in a napkin, symbolizing that our love would last for as long as the glass was shattered, which is to say, forever.
And then we kissed as the sun set, and the chef served us a Mexican feast on the beach. It was a perfect night.