PART 3

Daniel took the tray out of my hands.

He did it gently, almost casually, as though we were back in our farmhouse kitchen and I had been carrying something too hot. He set the tray on the nearest table without looking to see whose place setting he disturbed.

Then he looked at me again.

At my wet hair.

At the cardigan with MARISOL pinned over my heart.

At the wedding ring on my finger.

He had already seen the fountain when he entered the courtyard. He didn’t ask what happened. He knew enough from the water dripping off my dress and from the faces around us.

His thumb moved once across my cheek, wiping away a drop of water I hadn’t noticed.

“Hi, wife.”

Then he kissed me.

The courtyard became so quiet that the fountain sounded louder than it had all afternoon.

I heard ice settle inside somebody’s glass.

A chair creaked.

Somewhere behind Daniel, someone whispered his name again.

I kept one hand against his jacket because my legs were still colder than I wanted him to know.

He pulled back just far enough to look at me.

“You okay?”

“I’m standing.”

His mouth tightened.

For Daniel, that was the equivalent of a speech.

Gerald Pruitt reached us first.

He had apparently recovered from Daniel walking past his handshake, because his hand was already extended again.

“Mr. Ashby. Gerald Pruitt. Pruitt Medical Supply. We’ve been trying to get fifteen minutes with your office for—”

“I’m here for my wife.”

Daniel said it pleasantly.

He did not take Gerald’s hand.

Gerald stood there for one second too long with his arm extended.

Then the hand came down.

His eyes shifted to me.

To Marisol’s cardigan.

To the abandoned tray.

To the empty glass he had handed me only minutes before without bothering to look at my face.

I watched him calculate backward through the evening.

The little pharmacy.

The woman at Table 19.

The server he had ordered another drink from.

The woman Daniel Ashby had just called his wife.

At the head table, my father still held the microphone.

“Wife?”

The word came through the speakers because he had forgotten the microphone was on.

It sounded smaller amplified.

Brooke’s face had gone almost white.

Tanner was staring at Gerald.

My mother had one hand pressed against the edge of the table.

Marisol stood beside the bar with both hands over her mouth, smiling behind them.

The photographer kept taking pictures because he was the only person in the courtyard being paid not to freeze.

My father tried to laugh.

“Wav?”

His voice came through the speakers again.

“Is this another bit?”

“No, Daddy.”

I looked toward the fountain.

“The fountain was the bit.”

A few people lowered their eyes.

My father stepped down from the head table, microphone still in his hand.

The crowd followed him with their eyes.

Daniel rested one palm against the small of my back.

He didn’t pull me behind him.

He didn’t step in front of me.

He stood beside me.

That mattered.

My father stopped a few feet away.

“How long?”

“Fourteen months,” Daniel said.

My father stared.

“Fourteen months?”

“Wake County Courthouse. Thursday afternoon. Two witnesses.”

“You married my daughter and didn’t tell us?”

“I would’ve come sooner.”

Daniel looked at me.

“She asked me not to.”

My father turned toward me.

“Why on earth would you do that?”

The question was so sincere that I almost laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because my father genuinely could not imagine a reason.

“Because of what happened the last time you met someone I loved.”

His expression changed.

Only slightly.

But I saw it.

Twelve years vanished from his face.

For one second he was back at the VFW hall after my engagement to Cole Whitaker, shaking hands with people and telling everyone how happy he was for me.

Then another image must have followed.

Cole’s cashier’s check.

Forty thousand dollars.

A partnership my father never put on paper.

A young man asking for something in writing.

My father telling the town Cole wasn’t man enough to join the family without trusting him.

Cole leaving.

My father telling everyone I had been dumped.

The whole story returned to his face before he managed to push it away.

“Waverly, that was years ago.”

“It was.”

“You were twenty-five.”

“I was.”

“Cole made his own decisions.”

“So did you.”

The microphone in my father’s hand dipped toward his thigh.

Gerald Pruitt had moved closer.

“Roy.”

My father turned.

Gerald wasn’t smiling anymore.

“You told me she couldn’t get her life together.”

Nobody spoke.

Gerald looked from my father to me.

“Your words. At my table. Twice.”

My father’s drink tilted in his other hand.