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I met Callahan in the basement of the same church where we were getting married.
By then, I was 30 and had never really dated anyone. The men I met only saw my scars. After a while, I got tired of those stares.
No one seemed to look long enough to find my heart. They just saw me as damaged goods.
But Callahan was different. Even without sight, he saw me.
***
On our first date, I looked down at the diner table and said, “I should tell you something, Callie. I don’t look like other women.”
He smiled and reached for my hand across the booth. “Good! I’ve never loved ordinary things.”
I laughed so hard that I nearly cried. That should have warned me.
Even without sight, he saw me.
By the time Lorie placed my hand in his at the altar, all those sweet memories had me in tears.
Callahan stood with Buddy beside him in a black bow tie that one of his students had insisted on picking out. Those same students were supposed to play a love song when I came down the aisle. What they produced was a brave, uneven version of one, full of missed notes and fierce effort. It was terrible in the sweetest possible way.
When the pastor asked whether I took Callahan as my husband, I said yes before he finished.
Afterward, there were hugs, cheap cake, paper cups of punch, children running under folding tables, and Lorie pretending not to dab her eyes every time she looked at me.
For once, I was not the scarred woman people were politely trying not to notice. I was the bride.
Lorie drove us back to Callahan’s apartment after sunset. Buddy padded in first, exhausted from too much attention, and curled up near the bedroom doorway with the deep sigh of a dog who had fulfilled all duties expected of him.
My sister hugged me hard at the door. “You deserve this, Merry,” she whispered. “I’m so happy for you, love.”
Then she left, and it was just my husband and me, and the first quiet of our marriage settling around us.
I guided Callahan to the bedroom by the hand. When we reached the edge of the bed, he turned toward me, and I was more nervous than I had been walking down the aisle.
Not because he could see me. Because he couldn’t.