It was officially spring, a perfect day for a wedding. Though Kate had been promised it would all be small, her sister OT, the lover of weddings, had come in from Malaka and small was not a word that she had much use for.

“Katy, are you ready in there?” OT shouted through Kate’s small house.

“Ignore her,” Nchadi, Kate’s other sister said, pinning flowers at the back of Kate’s hair now styled with a hair piece that made her look nothing like her normal short-haired self. Nchadi was the opposite in every way to the big, loud, good-time girl OT and though they loved each other, they fought about everything they could.

OT pounded on the locked door of the bedroom. “Nchadi! I know it’s you in there! Open that door, people are waiting out here to see the bride! How can you lock the door? Open that door right now!”

Kate smiled in the mirror at her sister. “Let her in, she’ll soon kick the door in.”

Nchadi opened the door. “Why do you have to be so loud?”

OT pushed passed her, ignoring what she was saying. “Katy baby, let’s move it, everybody’s here. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Kate looked away. OT basically raised her after their mother died so hiding her emotions from her was not easy. OT knew her inside and out.

OT grabbed Kate’s face in her hand. “No, something’s wrong. Let’s hear it.”

“I thought you were in a hurry,” Nchadi said trying to save Kate from the interrogation but to no avail.

“It’s Moloi.” Kate couldn’t get her first husband out of her mind.

“Moloi?” OT said. “Moloi? You have a handsome man like John Mogami sitting out there twiddling his thumbs waiting for the woman that he adores and you are thinking of your dead husband?”

“Kate, don’t listen to her,” Nchadi said. She turned to OT. “You know you have the sensitivity of an elephant.”

“Humph!” OT said to Nchadi. “Kate, Moloi was a great man and a good father and husband, but he’s dead now. He would want you to go on with things, be happy. I knew him too you know.”

Kate remembered how much OT and Moloi had gotten on, sometimes better than she and her husband had. In Malaka, they often disappeared, moving from compound to compound visiting people, one of OT’s favourite things to do, and something Kate’s late husband had taken up from her. OT knew Moloi it was true. She smiled up at her sister. “You’re right.”

“Have you ever known a time that she wasn’t?” Nchadi asked sarcastically.

“Didimala wena! Katy let’s go! It’s time to party!” OT went out the door in front of Kate ululating and sweeping with an imaginary broom in front of her. Nchadi followed behind them. The three sisters entered the garden where guests were busy listening to the gumba- gumba speakers OT had organised. Some were dancing and some were eating, but when Kate came out the door everyone let out a cheer.

Kate looked around. She could see Rachel and Gomolemo under the morula tree with baby Lorato, now two months old, lying on a blanket in the shade. John’s two children, Modisa and Refilwe, were playing with Lorato. Margaret sat with Ntoko and his wife, Betty. They all smiled in her direction and she smiled back. She didn’t notice John, sneaking up to the side of her.

“Hello my beautiful wife,” John said. “Don’t I love saying that?”

Kate kissed him. “And hello to you my beautiful husband.”

“Can you believe we finally made it?” John asked.

Kate looked around at all of the people she loved most in the world: her son and his wife, John’s kids, her new granddaughter, her sisters and their children, Ntoko and his wife and Margaret, and she was happy, happy that they were all safe and healthy and that they were here to see her marry the man that she loved. Somewhere she knew her late husband was happy for her too. Everything was right in the world.

“Yes, Mr. Mogami,” Kate said looking at him and realising yet again how lucky they were to have found each other. “Yes, I do believe that we have finally made it.”

The End

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