She looked beautiful. She came down the aisle on her father’s arm, draped in creamy lace. Pink rosebuds were twined in her hair. Bonnie and Zander gazed at each other, and they both looked so incredibly happy that Elena’s breath caught in her throat.
“Dearly beloved,” the minister said, and Elena listened with only half an ear as she watched Bonnie and Zander take each other’s hands and smile at each other, a warm, private smile.
Elena had gotten a chance to talk to Bonnie last night after the rehearsal dinner. She and Meredith and Bonnie had sat up half the night in Bonnie’s room, talking things over, just like old times. When Meredith had stepped out for a minute, Elena had turned to Bonnie and breathed, “Bonnie, the last thing I remember before two weeks ago was Halloween night in Fell’s Church.”
Bonnie had squealed and leaped up to hug Elena. It was such a relief to have just one person to share this huge secret with, Elena thought, watching as Bonnie began to speak her vows, promising to have and to hold.
Things hadn’t changed that much for Bonnie in this life. She was a witch, she had gone to Dalcrest, she taught kindergarten, she loved Zander, she lived in Colorado. She was happy. Perhaps a little softer and gentler than the Bonnie Elena had known in the future she’d left behind. This Bonnie hadn’t been through so much, hadn’t seen her friends die.
Meredith, on the other hand, had changed. Elena cast a sideways glance at her gray-eyed friend. Meredith was so much happier here. She didn’t know anything about the supernatural, Bonnie had quietly confirmed. Well, she knew Bonnie said she was psychic, and was sort of New Agey with candles and herbs, but Meredith thought it was all a game. It was, Bonnie and Elena agreed, better that way.
Meredith had graduated from Harvard Law School. She was going to take the bar next month, and she wanted to work for the public defender’s office in Boston. She wasn’t a hunter. She wasn’t a vampire.
Last night, when they’d been sharing gossip and updating one another on their lives, Meredith, eyes shining, had told them about the work she’d done with some of her classmates and professors, researching the cases of prisoners on death row that hadn’t been handled properly, trying to prove the innocence of people who had been wrongly convicted.
“You’re saving people,” Elena had said, impressed. “Like a warrior.” Meredith had blushed with pleasure. It didn’t matter if she hunted monsters or not, Elena realized. Meredith was always going to find a way to be a hero.
“You may kiss the bride,” the minister said, and Bonnie leaned up as Zander leaned down and they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed, tenderly.
Unexpectedly, tears welled up in Elena’s eyes and she bit her lip, hard, to force them away.
She was so happy for Bonnie, she told herself fiercely. And her own life was wonderful, everything she would have dreamed of in a world where she didn’t have to hunt monsters, didn’t have to be a Guardian.
It was just that, the last time she’d been in Bonnie’s wedding, she’d felt the brush of Damon’s admiring regard from his seat in the audience.
Bonnie and Zander were heading down the aisle, leaving the church, and it was time to follow them. Elena took the arm of her werewolf groomsman—Spencer, the preppy one—and laughed politely at his joke without really hearing it.
Outside, it was early evening, and the leaves were just beginning to change. There was a briskness in the air, the beginning of fall. Fall, again. The last time she’d been in Fell’s Church in the fall was seven years ago, although it only felt like a few weeks, the night she’d said good-bye to Stefan and Damon.
They were out there somewhere—probably—and she should be glad of it, was glad of it, fiercely glad that they were still alive.
She felt that wistfulness again, stronger still, at the beginning of the reception, when Jared, Zander’s best man, started his toast.
“Uh …” the shaggy-haired werewolf began, “when Zander started dating Bonnie, we all thought she was awesome, but we were like, ‘Really?’ because she wasn’t, uh, the same kind of person we were.” Looking around the circle of faces smiling at him, Jared’s eyes went wide and panicky.
This was the same toast Jared had given in that other world, so Elena knew he’d be able to pull it together. But that time, Damon’s eyes had met Elena’s, and she had felt Damon’s rich amusement coming straight through the bond between them. They’d both laughed at the same time, quiet laughter at an inside joke.
At this wedding without that bond, without Damon, Elena felt slightly adrift.
After the toast, she and Meredith picked up their place cards and found their tables at the reception. There was someone already sitting there, and Elena grinned with delight. “Matt!”
Matt—bigger and broader than the last time she’d seen him, but with the same open, friendly face—got to his feet and hugged them both. Beside him, a tiny woman, almost as tiny as Bonnie, jumped to her feet and hugged them, too, blond curls bouncing over her shoulders.
“This is Jeannette,” Matt said proudly.
“I’ve heard so much about you!” she said, excitedly to Elena. “Matt and I keep saying we’re going to come to Europe and see everything you’ve been e-mailing him about since college. The gallery and all.”
Sue Carson and her husband and a couple of Bonnie’s college friends came to join them at the table, and the next few minutes were full of greetings and introductions.
“I’m going to get another drink,” Jeannette said brightly after a few minutes, hopping up from the table. “I know you want a beer, honey, and can I get anyone else anything?”