“Is she almost ready?” Nick asked his sixteen year old daughter, Alexis.
“Yup,” Alexis answered. “We’ll call you in a minute.” Nick watched as Alexis disappeared back into the room to help her older sister.
“Nervous?” BJ asked. Nick whipped around and saw his sister grinning at him, her five year old daughter standing next to her.
“No,” Nick answered. “Why would I be nervous? It’s not my wedding.”
“Because you’re letting your baby go,” BJ explained. “It’s only natural that you’d be nervous. You’re questioning whether you’ve raised her right.”
Nick stared at his sister in shock, wondering how she could have read him so well. “How do you do that?” he asked.
BJ shrugged and grinned. “It’s a gift. Now excuse me while I make sure this little flower girl here is all ready to go.”
“Dad!” Alexis called. “We’re ready! Come on back!” Nick walked into the room at the back of the church where Alexis had just called him from.
“I’m going to go make sure everyone else is ready to go,” she informed them before disappearing from the room, closing the door behind her. Nick watched her go, his back to the inside of the room.
“You can turn around now,” he heard from behind him. Nick slowly turned around in a circle and gasped when he saw his oldest daughter standing there in her wedding gown.
“You look beautiful, honey,” he complimented her.
“Thanks dad,” Elizabeth replied, smoothing her dress down.
“I have something for you,” he told her. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little box.
“What’s that?” Elizabeth questioned. Nick didn’t answer. Instead, he opened it up and pulled out a silver chain with a small diamond stone dangling from it. He walked behind her and carefully placed it around her neck, clasping it in the back.
“This was your mother’s,” he explained. “I gave it to her on her twenty fourth birthday. She never took it off and right before she died, she made me promise to give it to you on your wedding day.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Elizabeth whispered, her eyes tearing up. She didn’t remember very much about her mother. Most of what she knew about her, she learned from her father and her aunts and uncles. She knew that her parents had been best friends for most of their lives before they got married. She knew about her mother running away and how they found each other again. And she knew about her illness and the fact that she passed away when Elizabeth was only three years old. Her dad had once told her that he promised her mother that he would never let Elizabeth forget her and Elizabeth knew that her father did everything in his power to keep that promise. When she was eight years old, her dad had remarried a woman who never once tried to act like her mother and Elizabeth was grateful for that. Even though she had spent most of her life without a mom, she didn’t want anyone to replace the one that she did have. And out of that marriage came two younger brothers and a baby sister. Short of having her real mother around, there was nothing else Elizabeth could have asked for. She had a good life and she wouldn’t have traded it for the world.
“She would have been so proud of you,” Nick told her, tearfully. “She loved you so much.” He only got emotional about Kayleigh’s death every once in a while. There were things in Elizabeth’s life that he really wished she could have been there for and it was on those occasions that he let himself act this way.
“I know, daddy,” Elizabeth stated, turning around to hug him. “I know she did. She loves us both.” And indeed Kayleigh did love them both. She watched over them every day of their lives and could not have been more proud of the way Elizabeth had grown up. And of the way Nick had raised her. Everyone’s time came at some point and Kayleigh’s had just come a little earlier than most. But she wouldn’t have traded her life for anything in the world. In her twenty four years, she had been blessed with the most wonderful life. She had a beautiful daughter. A loving husband. And the best friend anyone could have ever asked for.