Chapter 18

We ate an early lunch, and went upstairs to change for the wedding. Gill went up early, for after her prayer she needed a shower before putting on the dress she'd wear to the wedding. I put on one of my best suits, a black affair with a very thin stripe. Gill's chosen dress was electric blue, one of my favorites, which showed off her blond hair and sea green eyes and tanned skin very well. It also subtly emphasized her figure, and as caught up in the wedding as I was, I gazed at her, thoroughly a man. I loved her mind, her heart, her close relationship with God, but I loved the rest of her too, and I felt almost as I had the first time I'd seen her, when I didn't know her at all but only saw how wonderful she looked.

We were downstairs before Hadassah, and when our daughter realized that we were waiting for her she took the last few stairs as though she were making a grand entrance. It had been a long time since I'd seen her in a dress; she preferred sweaters and jeans. This dress must have been a new one, for I'd never seen it before, though how she'd afforded it I didn't know. It was an ivory color that contrasted well with her black curls, and glowed against her olive skin. Her temperament was Gill's, but she got her looks from me; she was dark, drawing from my Italian and black Irish ancestors – and possibly black ancestors as well, though there was no proof of that old family story. I don't ordinarily pay much attention to women's clothes – a thing which irritated Gill no end in the early part of our marriage – but I noticed Hadassah that day.

The sleeves ended at about the middle of her biceps, and puffed out above hems or cuffs, whatever the correct term, that were a couple of inches wide. The dress had a sweetheart neckline, and I could see a thin silver chain around her neck, one that we'd given her for her 16^th birthday. It bore a heart pendant, which I knew on the back said simply, WE LOVE YOU.

I stood up involuntarily. "You're beautiful," I said in awe. I'd learned earlier in all this that my daughter was a beautiful woman, and now I felt the impact of it in my gut. She was beautiful, truly so, with her curls caught in a clip at the base of her neck and her makeup just right, and a gentle smile on her face.

"Thank you, Daddy. You know, I've never really thought about my looks, but today I feel beautiful."

"As you well should, honey." Gill had risen beside me. "You know that I've struggled over this, especially the speed of it, but I'll be proud today to say that you're my daughter as you marry Josh."

"Thank you, Mommy." And it was time for a group hug. We were all careful not to ruin each other's clothes and the women's makeup, but there was still strength in the embrace.

And then it was time to go to the church. Gill drove, as she had the day before, and Hadassah leaned her forearm against the back of Gill's seat, looking eagerly out of the windshield as we traveled toward the wedding. I half turned in my seat and looked at her. With her hair pulled back I could see the upturn of her mouth, and the brightness of her eyes, and the nose which was just slightly too big – but then I like a big nose. That nose was the one thing that perhaps had come from Gill, who does not have a petite nose.

Hadassah caught me staring at her. "What?"

"It's just that I'm realizing in my gut, for the first time, that you're almost grown up."

"A lot of that's just in the last couple of months. If I'd really been grown up we wouldn't be doing this today." She said it without bitterness or sorrow, as simply a statement of fact.

"We all make mistakes, daughter, we all sin. I'm a bit older than you are, and yet I don't always act like an adult."

She considered that, and – I supposed – how to answer it. "Still, I'm more grownup now than I was before," she said finally. "I've heard you say that the military is a good way for people to grow up in a hurry. I think being pregnant at 17 can do it too. It's certainly jolted me along."

I asked a question that ordinarily I'd have never even considered, but the atmosphere was right for it just then. "Are you sorry you're pregnant?"

She shook her head. I could see Gill's profile just beyond Hadassah's, and it seemed to me that she was intensely interested though she hadn't said anything. "Sorry I'm pregnant?" Hadassah asked. "No, I'm not sorry about that. It's a glorious, wonderful thing, knowing that every day a baby is growing inside me. I'm a cradle of new life. There's a new, unique human being inside me, Daddy. It's very special being pregnant." She paused, and looked intently at me, wanting, I guessed, for me to clearly understand her. "But I'm very sorry about how I got pregnant. Josh and I should have waited. We knew better, and we should have done better. At the very least we should have gotten married before we slept together."

She put her hand on my arm, and looked me even more intently in the eyes. "Daddy, if I'd come to you and told you that Josh and I were so attracted physically that we could hardly stand it, and wanted to get married early so we could avoid sin, what would you have done?"