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she wondered about her parents, the quiet life they had lived in that home.
    Agnes never asked her father about the letter she found. In October, he informed her that Qiulian would be flying down in
     a month and that they would be married in a civil ceremony at the courthouse. He wondered if Agnes would be their witness.
     Also if there was a restaurant in the area suitable for a small wedding banquet. No more than three tables, he said.
    In the marriage bureau, tiny pictures in pastel frames—a cheetah running, an eagle spreading its wings—decorated the walls
     of the waiting area. There was a sign in the room prohibiting photographs. Agnes sighed as she looked at her watch. Her daughters
     would be home from school in an hour and would be catching a ride to the banquet with Agnes’s friend. Her brother wasn’t coming.
     He had been depressed by their father’s news and told Agnes it was too difficult for him to leave the farm. Agnes got up from
     her seat and inspected a picture of a sailboat skimming moonlit waters. The caption read:
You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
It made Agnes laugh out loud, and the receptionist glanced up at her from her desk.
    Her father arrived a moment later with his bride. He was beaming, handsomely dressed in a dark gray suit and platinum tie,
     two red carnations fastened to his lapel. He introduced Agnes and Qiulian with mock solemnity, exaggerating the tones of their
     names, lifting himself in the air and falling back on his heels. Qiulian smiled and told Agnes that her American name was
     Lily. Everything Lily wore was white. There was her opaque white dress suit with its faintly puffed sleeves. Her pearl earrings
     and two strands of pearls wound closely around her neck. A corsage of white roses enmeshed in a swirl of white ribbon pinned
     to her chest. She had decided on white just as if she were a first-time American bride, even though white was no color at
     all, what you wore to another person’s funeral. Perhaps it was a sign of Lily’s true feelings.
    Agnes grasped her father’s arm and pulled him aside. “How old is she, by the way?” It infuriated her that this woman was closer
     to her age than she had expected.
    “That’s top secret,”her father said, adjusting his carnations. “She’s very nice, isn’t she? Do I look all right? What do you
     think of my tie?” He glanced over at Lily, who stood serenely looking at her shoes. She held a small beaded purse between
     both hands, and it seemed from her empty expression that she was pretending not to hear their conversation. “Incredible!”
     he muttered. “I’m supposed to feel less as I grow old. But it’s the opposite — I feel more and more!” His eyes widened,
     and he knocked his fist against his chest. “Can you believe it? A seventy-eight-year-old heart like mine!” He walked back
     to Lily, smiling and patting her hand.
    Agnes felt her skin begin to itch. She wanted to lift her sweater, scratch herself luxuriously until she bled, but the receptionist
     told them it was time, and they were ushered into a narrow green-carpeted room where the justice of the peace stood waiting
     behind a podium. Behind him was a trellis on which a few straggling vines of artificial clematis drooped. It was a halfhearted
     attempt at illusion, and, for this reason, it gave Agnes some relief. It startled her to think that she had once cared about
     the color of roses matching her bridesmaids’ dresses. That day had been a fantasy, with its exquisite bunches of flowers,
     so perfect they did not seem real. At one point, she had looked up at the sky and laughed . . . she had felt so light and
     happy. She had worn a white ballroom dress and—of all things—a rhinestone tiara! If photographs still existed of her in that
     Cinderella outfit, they resided in other people’s albums, for she had torn her own into bits.
    Her father was listening to the justice with an