On the day of my daughter’s wedding, I found my photo at the gate with a sign: “Do not let her in.” I turned and left in silence. Four hours later, she realized her wedding had ended when I went home.

I refused to wear those shiny patent leather shoes that pinch your toes. Instead, I polished my work boots, the good ones, the ones I wore to Robert’s funeral, and figured a little black shoe polish would hide the scuffs. Nobody would be looking at my feet anyway. They’d be looking at my daughter.

I stopped in front of the fireplace on my way out. Robert’s photograph sat on the mantle right where it’s been since the day I placed it there 14 years ago. He was smiling in the picture, standing in front of this very cabin, holding a level in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “We just finished hanging the front door. He was so proud of that door.”

“Today, our baby girl gets married, Robert,” I said to the photograph. My voice cracked on the word married. “I wish you were here to walk her down the aisle, but I’ll do it. I’ll do it for both of us. I promise.”

Robert Carter, my husband, the gentlest man I ever knew. He was a carpenter by trade, an artist by nature. He could look at a piece of rough lumber and see the table hiding inside it. He built our kitchen cabinets by hand. He carved Amber’s first crib from a single piece of white oak.

He died of lung cancer when Amber was 14, and the world lost a color that day that it never got back.

I remember the funeral. Rain so heavy it felt personal, like the sky was grieving with us. Amber stood next to me at the grave, soaking wet, neither of us bothering with an umbrella. She grabbed my hand. Her fingers were so small, so cold, and she squeezed it with a strength that surprised me.

“Mama,” she said, her voice barely audible over the rain. “I promise I’ll never leave you alone. We’re a team, right? You and me.”