Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 58 of 78

The altar was built. But the next morning, Kylie stood inside the linen gate and heard nothing. No music. On Saturday she would speak her vows to silence. She had always imagined a song under this moment. Now she saw the trap. She could sing at her own wedding, or she could marry, but she could not do both at once. If she performed, she would stand apart from Arianna. If she stayed beside her, the vows would land in flat, empty air. She had no band. No hidden speaker could play on a secret island. No stranger could carry sound to a place no one could find. She sat on a bench and pressed her hands to her face. Arianna came down the sand carrying her guitar. It was warm brown wood, worn smooth where her fingers had rested for a year. She sat beside Kylie and set it across her lap. "You keep trying to fill the quiet yourself," Arianna said. "You don't have to." "I wanted music. But I can't sing and marry you at the same time." "Then don't sing it." Arianna touched the strings. A soft chord rose over the water. "I'll play. You just stand with me." Kylie shook her head. "You're the bride too. You shouldn't be working through your own wedding." "I'm not working." Arianna played the opening of their song, the one they wrote line by line for a year. Her voice came in low and sure. "This is how I want to walk toward you. Playing the thing we made." Kylie went still. She had planned to give Arianna music. She had never thought Arianna would want to give it instead. "But then no one sings with you," Kylie said. Arianna stopped and looked at her. "You will. Not at the same time. Before." She pointed to the linen gate. "You stand there first and sing one verse alone. Then you set the microphone down and walk to me. I play the rest while we say our vows. The song carries us both to the center." Kylie saw it whole. She did not have to choose between singing and marrying. She would do one, then the other. The music would not stop when she reached Arianna. It would keep going in Arianna's hands. "You'd play through your own vows," Kylie said. "I've played through worse." Arianna smiled. "I played through a year of waiting." They practiced it until the sun dropped. Kylie stood at the gate and sang the first verse alone, her voice bare over the sand. Then she set down an imagined microphone and walked the short path to Arianna, who carried the melody forward on the strings. The song did not break. It handed off, from voice to guitar, from Kylie to Arianna, without a gap. The ceremony had its music now. On Saturday the vows would not fall into silence. One verse from Kylie, the rest from Arianna's guitar, and no stranger would ever hear a note of it.