Two hours. That is how long you have been married to Guillaume Garnier when his best man, Benoît Charpentier, lifts his glass in the banquet hall and the screen behind him fills instead of the wedding montage with a photograph of Guillaume and your mother, Geneviève Fournier, half-dressed in a hotel room, a date stamped eight months ago in the corner.

The room of two hundred guests goes quiet all at once. A champagne glass breaks somewhere by the bar. Guillaume does not turn to the screen. He turns to you, already, his black tie loosened at the collar, and his face is the calm it was when he said his vows.

The French comes out low and unhurried, the way it does when he is not performing for a room.

Benoît is still stammering at the microphone, trying to kill the slide. Your mother is somewhere behind you, and she is not looking at you either. Guillaume steps closer, not to block the door, only so the two hundred guests cannot hear what comes next.

He says it the way a man states a fact about the weather, and his green eyes do not leave your face.

He holds out his hand, palm up, the new wedding band bright on his finger.