I’d love to say that the woman disappeared in a puff of smoke or a sparkly shimmer, but there was none of that. She, her court of followers who’d been disguised among my human friends, plus Jack Peterson, just winked out with no disturbance of air, no clap of sound, no smell of greenery, or any other announcement of magic. They were just present and then not present.
At the same moment that the faery queen left us, the people around us began to stir. Timothy and I scooted back to our place in front of the officiate, and after a quick view backwards at the seated guests, followed by quiet blinks and the clearing of the officiant’s voice, the judge began again, repeating those troublesome words of: if anyone had a reason for this marriage not to take place . . . The room was silent this time. No disturbance. No voice calling out an objection. No Jack Peterson.
Before that point, I’d noticed that the living room had been on overflow, but those still standing quickly realized that there were plenty of vacant seats and scurried to find themselves one. The folks who had already been sitting, were still looking dazed and slightly disoriented. (Several had been frozen with an arm up to soothe back a hair, to scratch a nose, or possibly to pat the hand of the person beside them. Would that arm be sore, fatigued, or weighty now that they had their freedom of movement again?)
When no one called out to deny us the right to be married (luckily,) the officiate continued with his words. Timothy and I swore to cherish and honor each other in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth.
I cracked up at that one, and Timothy, knowing exactly what I thought about all his riches, just smiled and squeezed my hand. Money was rather the big abyss between us. I wanted to abstain from accessing his bank accounts and his piles of green bills, and he was ardent in his insistence that whatever he owned was mine. (Yes, I know, my viewpoint was slightly particular — Timothy called it my moral stubbornness, but my grandmother had taught me to stand on my own feet, not be a sponge of someone else’s wealth. So sue me for my oddness.)
The truth of the matter is that we’d met with a lawyer a few days before our wedding. He’d made us sign a bunch of documents. A summary of that session, which lapsed into arguments several times as I rebelled against Timothy’s dictatorial attitude concerning the whole process, is that Timothy’s wealth was mine and mine was his. (Like I had any.)
The lawyer wanted me to sign another form in case of divorce, but Timothy negated that, his face looking so dire, that if I’d been the attorney, I would have crawled under his desk.
“That cannot happen,” Timothy said.
Yeah, there was that. This Pooka thing was a forever. Andrew had explained that, making sure that I understood the nature of it.