Chapter 10 - The Friendly Lion
The wedding was held in the garden behind the stone mansion on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in September.
There were no society photographers. There were no corporate sponsors. There were only fifty people—the estate staff, Grace’s family from Ohio, and a few of Nathaniel’s oldest friends who had known him before he became the "cold billionaire."
Lily walked down the grass aisle first, wearing a bright yellow dress that Nathaniel had ordered from Paris, though she had insisted on pairing it with her favorite red sneakers. In her arms, she carried both the restored stuffed rabbit and a giant card she had spent three days coloring.
When Grace walked down the aisle, her father’s old silver locket around her neck, Nathaniel looked at her with an expression that made his old Harvard friends blink in disbelief. The unreachable king of Boston shipping looked like a man who had just been given the keys to the universe.
The vows were short, spoken in the quiet space between the wind in the boxwood hedges and the distant sound of the city below.
"I promise to keep the walls thick enough to protect you," Nathaniel said, his voice cracking slightly as he slid a simple diamond band onto her finger. "And thin enough that we can always hear each other."
"I promise to keep you from becoming a shadow," Grace answered, her eyes shining with absolute certainty.
After the ceremony, the guests moved toward the terrace for dinner. Nathaniel stood near the edge of the garden hill, looking out over the city lights that were just beginning to blink on in the twilight.
Lily toddled up to him, her red sneakers squeaking on the stone path. She tapped his leg. "Nathaniel?"
He knelt down instantly, his black tuxedo trousers hitting the grass without a second thought. "Yes, Lily?"
She handed him the card she had been carrying all day.
Nathaniel opened it. Inside, the drawing showed three figures standing hand-in-hand. One was a woman with brown curls, one was a little girl in a yellow dress, and the largest one was a giant lion with a brilliant, multicolored mane. The lion wasn't roaring; it was smiling, its large green eyes filled with a clumsy, hand-drawn warmth.
At the bottom, in big, shaky letters that Grace had helped her trace, it read:
OUR LION.
Nathaniel pulled the little girl into his arms, holding her tight as Grace walked up behind them, wrapping her arms around both of them from above.
May you like
The wind blew through the trees on the hill, but inside the circle of their arms, the cold air couldn't reach them anymore. The fire in the ballroom had burned away the old, fragile things, but what was built around the heart was made of iron, gold, and a love that would never lose its light.
THE END.
