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Then the vows.

He had three pages. I found all three on the kitchen counter and told him that if he gave a twelve-minute speech I would leave him at the altar while remaining legally married to him.

He has four lines now, and no card.

“Astrid, I love you. I want the life we have and the parts we haven’t decided on yet. I promise I’ll ask before I decide something that belongs to both of us. And when you answer, I’ll listen.”

He stops there. He said he would.

I did not write mine down. I have been saying it to the windscreen of my truck for a week.

“I love you. I choose this marriage when nothing requires me to choose it. I promise to tell you what I want before I punish you for not knowing. And I will make room for your answer.”

His hand closes on mine.

Between us, Tova sniffs.

“I’m fine.”

“Nobody asked,” Colt says, without moving his mouth.

The officiant smiles down at his card.

“One final question. How would you like to be introduced?”

Colt looks at me. We have not discussed it.

The last stranger who called me Mrs. Riley was a waiter, and I corrected him.

“Riley,” I say.

Colt does not say anything at all.

“Colt and Astrid Riley,” the officiant announces.

Tova’s whole face changes. She holds my flowers against her chest and looks at me as though I have handed her something else as well.

I take the front of Colt’s jacket and pull him down before the officiant has finished giving us permission.

The room comes apart behind us.

At the reception my mother reaches Colt before anyone else does.

I watch from across the room. She takes his face in both hands and looks at it the way I look at a new patient, for damage. I cannot hear her from here. He listens to all of it and answers with two words, and I would know the shape of yes, ma’am from across any room in Texas. She pats his cheek once and lets him go.

Later, beside the cake, she tells me in Swedish that she has not seen me like this since I was small. Then she finds the word she wants. Lugn.

There is no good English for it. Calm is too thin. Settled is closer.

Tova arrives in the middle of it with an opinion about the cake, and my mother answers her, and I answer my mother, and soon the three of us are arguing beside a wedding cake in a language nobody else in the room has more than nine words of.

Finn and Catalina stop me on my way to the bar. Finn takes the hat off to congratulate me and puts it straight back on.

“Colt gave him that,” Catalina says. “He’s worn it twice. The day we got the keys to the house, and today.”

“The barn too,” Finn adds.

“The barn doesn’t count. You couldn’t find your other one.”