He Said Apologize, I Said the Wedding Is Off novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Healing Brunch

The lodge dining room had been set with white tablecloths and little paper hearts.

There were about thirty people, mostly women, and every one of them turned when Birdie and I walked in.

"I'll sit beside you," Birdie said, "and if I cough, it means I'm about to throw something."

Marcy sat at the head table in a cream sweater with my grandmother's brooch on the collar.

Her son sat beside her, eating a pancake.

She saw me and put her hand to her chest.

"Greta. You came."

"I did."

"I'm so glad," she said, and her voice cracked. "I wasn't sure you could stand to look at us."

A woman at the next table patted Marcy's arm and glared at me.

I walked up to the head table and stopped.

"You're wearing something of mine," I said.

"I'm sorry?"

"The brooch. It's a bird with a garnet eye. It was in the dresser in the back bedroom on Thursday, and it's on your collar today."

Marcy touched it, and her face went soft and wounded.

"Rupert gave this to me," she said. "To remember Carl by."

"Rupert has never seen it."

"Then I must be mistaken. It's so easy to be mistaken about grief."

"Ladies," the woman beside her said sharply, "we came here to support a widow, and not to watch her cross-examined."

"I'm not cross-examining anyone," I said. "I'm asking one thing."

I turned and faced the room.

"On Thursday night Marcy showed her husband's family a chat with my picture on it, calling her son a leech and telling him to stay away from my wedding."

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