“Mr. Lindqvist,” I said. “You don’t have to—”
“Garold,” he said. “Please.”
He kept searching.
“I’ve been digging in Lake Michigan mud for forty years,” he said. “Docks. Pilings. Boathouses. I know how to find things in mud.”
Paige knelt down on my other side.
She put her hands in the mud too.
Then Sofia from the bakery.
Then Barbara from the Women’s Club. In her yellow dress.
Then Mike the firefighter.
Then Joy the photographer. She took her camera off. She handed it to Theo. She knelt down.
Frank was still sitting on the grass.
He watched them.
All of them. On their knees. In the mud. Digging for my mother’s locket.
Then he got up.
He walked over.
He knelt down in front of me.
In his gray suit. With the lilac in his lapel.
He put his hands in the mud.
“Nina,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m so sorry,” Frank said. “That’s just how she is. I said it a hundred times. I said it about you. I said it about Dad. I said it about the mug.”
He was crying.
“I knew,” he said. “Somewhere. I always knew. I just didn’t want to.”
He looked at his father. On his knees in the mud. With his sleeve rolled up.
“I learned it from him,” Frank said quietly. “Looking at my plate. Saying Yes, Mom. Not seeing.”
Garold stopped digging.
He looked at his son.
“I’m sorry, Frankie,” he said.
Frank shook his head.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Dad.”
“I do,” Garold said. “I let you grow up thinking that’s what marriage is. Keeping quiet. Looking at your plate. Taking it.”
He looked at me.
“I almost let you do it to her,” he said.
Garold found the locket.
Eleven minutes later.
He pulled his hand out of the mud.
He opened it.
There it was.
Black. Covered in clay. The chain broken in two places.
But the locket was closed.
Oval. With the tiny lilac sprig on the front.
He held it out to me.
I took it.
My hands were shaking.
I wiped the mud off with my thumb.
I opened it.
Inside, two pictures.
Me as a baby.
My abuela Rosa as a young woman in Puebla.
Dry.
Perfect.
Not a speck of mud.
I started to cry.
“She sealed it,” I whispered. “My mom. When she had it engraved. She had the jeweler put a little rubber gasket inside. She said in case I ever went swimming in it.”
I laughed. Through the tears.
“I never went swimming in it,” I said.
Garold looked at the locket.
“Smart woman,” he said quietly.
We didn’t stop the wedding.
Everybody thought we would. The caterer. The DJ. The venue coordinator. They all came up to me. Do you want to cancel the reception? Do you want to go home?
I stood up.
In the garden. In my ruined dress.
The whole left side black with mud. From my shoulder to my hem. The train soaked. The beading caked. The seed-pearl lilacs Margaret spent three weeks on, filled with clay.
“No,” I said.
I looked at the guests.
A hundred and twelve people. Most of them with mud on their knees. On their hands. On their nice clothes.
“We’re having a reception,” I said. “I worked nine months on this. I made twelve kinds of cherry pie.”
Somebody laughed.
“And I’m wearing this dress,” I said.
The venue coordinator, a woman named Kristin, looked at me.
“Nina,” she said gently. “There’s a spare dress in the bridal suite. One of our emergency ones. White. It might fit.”
I looked down at my dress.
At the mud.
At the black clay on the ivory silk.
“No,” I said. “This is my dress.”
I held up my mother’s locket. Muddy. Broken chain.
“My mother came to Wisconsin from Puebla when she was nineteen,” I said. “She cleaned rooms at a resort in Fish Creek. She scrubbed toilets for rich people for nine years. She came home every night with her hands raw. She never once complained.”
I looked at the guests.
“She used to say, Mija, there’s no shame in dirt. Dirt washes off. Shame doesn’t.”
I looked down at my dress.
“This dirt washes off,” I said.
I looked at Garold. At his arm. At his sleeve still rolled up.
“What we just saw doesn’t,” I said.
We had the reception.
In the barn. Under the string lights. With the hayloft doors open and the sunset coming in.
I wore my muddy dress.
Frank wore his muddy suit.
Half the guests had mud on their knees. Barbara Haugen had mud all down the front of her yellow dress. She didn’t care. She danced to September with Mike the firefighter and laughed so hard she had to sit down.
We ate my mother’s mole poblano. And tamales. And arroz rojo. And Door County whitefish.
Nobody called it peasant food.
Barbara had three helpings.
We ate twelve kinds of cherry pie.
And then the DJ called for the father-daughter dance.
I hadn’t planned one.
I didn’t have a father. My mother was gone. I’d told the DJ to skip it.
But he called it anyway.
I looked at him. Confused.
Garold was standing next to the DJ booth.
He’d asked.
He walked across the barn floor.
In his gray suit. With mud dried on the knees. And his sleeve still rolled up.
He hadn’t rolled it back down.
Not all evening.
He stopped in front of me.
He held out his hand.
His big, scarred, burned hand.
“Nina,” he said. “Would you dance with me?”
I took his hand.
The DJ played a song.
I didn’t recognize it at first.
Then I did.
Bésame Mucho.
My mother’s favorite song.
She sang it in the kitchen. Every Sunday morning. While she made pan dulce. Off-key. Loud. With flour on her hands.
I looked at Garold.
“How did you know?” I whispered.
“Paige asked Sofia,” Garold said. “From your bakery. Sofia said your mother sang it every Sunday. Sofia said you sing it too. In the bakery. At four in the morning. When you think nobody can hear.”
I started to cry.
Again.
I’d cried more that day than in three years.
Garold held me.
We danced.
Slowly. Around the barn floor. Under the string lights. Him in his muddy suit with his sleeve rolled up. Me in my muddy dress with my mother’s locket in my hand.
