After He Gave My Wedding Away, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Four Brides
Hattie's kitchen was built for one nurse and a cat, and by seven o'clock it held five women.
Linnea sat on the counter with a legal pad.
The woman from Atlanta stood at the stove, stirring a pot of soup nobody had asked for.
She was forty, broad-shouldered, with flour still in the creases of her knuckles from a bakery she no longer owned.
The potter from Asheville sat at the very end of the table with her coat on.
She was twenty-eight, thin, and she had not said a word since she came in.
"I'll start," I said, because someone had to. "Rowena and Colin are marrying on Saturday at Linden Hill. Colin texted me, and she wants me in the front row."
"She wants you where she can see you," the baker said.
"She wants all of us," Linnea said.
"Colin's mother sent me a card in 2018," the baker said. "A real card. It said she hoped I'd come to the reception."
"Did you?"
"I sat in my car in the parking lot for two hours."
The potter flinched.
Hattie put a bowl of soup in front of her and a spoon next to the bowl.
"Eat," Hattie said. "I'm a nurse. I can tell when somebody hasn't."
The potter picked up the spoon.
"I can't go back in there," she said, very low. "I threw up in the aisle in 2023. In front of everyone. They put it online."
"I saw it," I said.
She looked up fast.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I saw it the night it happened, and I thought, that poor woman. I didn't know it would be me."
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