They all smiled and wept when they knew she was watching, and told her how lucky she was. But when she peered at them through curtains or the cracks of doors, they only wept. Her mother, who had told her just that morning how beautiful she looked in her new dress, muffled her sobs in the last of its embroidery.

Since they so clearly didn’t want her to, she pretended not to see. She watched them carry heaps of flowers up to the church on the hill, and she toyed with the beads that hung like tears from her new veil, tiny quartz cuts and chimes like she had only seen hanging before around the necks of birds bled and buried for a good harvest.