The stranger was Mr. Delgado, the man who had bought my father’s cabin on Pine Lake eleven years earlier. We had sold it to cover Dad’s hospital bills, and I had never stopped talking about it. Hannah had written to him in the spring. He had kept the place empty, hoping someone from our family would come back, and he agreed to sell it to her for $18,000 down and a small payment plan.

That was the missing money. Hannah had gone back to the bridal shop, chosen a gown that cost $3,600, and then returned it that same week. She invented the story of the $18,000 dress because she knew I would never let her spend that much on a cabin. Her bridesmaids and parents had kept the secret for months, which explained all the giggling. I had never been so happy to be fooled.

Then she explained the pajamas, laughing through her tears. The night we met, a storm knocked out the power on our street, and she knocked on my door in those flannel bottoms to borrow candles. I told my best friend the next morning that I would marry her. She said she wanted to marry me in the clothes I fell in love with, not in a dress that would have cost us the cabin. The photographer was crying behind his camera.

I could not speak, so I pulled her into my arms in front of everyone. We said our vows that afternoon, her in flannel and me in my borrowed suit, while my father’s old friends clapped from the pews. We spent our shortened honeymoon at the cabin, replacing rotted dock boards together. Last summer, our daughter took her first steps across those new boards while Mr. Delgado cheered from the shore. The wooden tag still hangs beside the door, and Hannah’s pajamas are folded in the closet, kept just in case.