“Look toward the chair.”
I did.
And for the first time that entire day, I let myself imagine Dad sitting there.
Then the photographer said something that made Margaret’s face change.
“That’s the photograph for the front page of your wedding album.”
Margaret looked stunned.
I turned toward her.
“You were right about one thing.”
She stared at me.
“Photographs do last forever.”
I smiled.
“So I wanted the most important person in my life to be in the first one.”
I looked at Nathan.
Then at Mom.
Then at Daniel.
“This isn’t a photograph of a man with Down syndrome walking his sister down an aisle.”
I paused.
“It’s a photograph of a brother keeping a promise to his father.”
Margaret said nothing.
But I wasn’t finished.
I had asked the photographer to create something else that morning.
She opened her camera and showed Margaret the first preview.
It was a photograph of Nathan and me walking down the aisle.
But beside us, carefully captured in the background, was Dad’s old framed photograph.
The same photograph we had placed near the entrance that morning.
Nathan was walking toward it.
I was walking beside him.
And the angle made it look almost as though Dad were waiting for us at the end.
