I Was His Wife, She Was His Everything novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Low Tide
I walked down to Sallie's in my bare feet with the baby on my hip.
The whole creek smelled like diesel and salt and somebody's bacon.
The old shrimper with the bad hip was sitting on an upturned bucket at the top of the ramp, in a clean white shirt.
"Morning, bride," he said. "Fleet's in."
"I see that."
"We're taking you out after. One loop of the harbor. You and him and the shrimp."
"He's seven weeks old."
"Then he'll sleep through it."
Sallie came out the kitchen door with two coffees and her hair in rollers.
"Give me that boy and go back to bed," she said. "You've got eleven hours till you're a wife again, and you look like a wet cat."
"Where's Lawton?"
"On the roof of my walk-in, stringing lights. Clancy's holding the ladder." She sipped. "Badly."
I went back to bed.
I slept till noon for the first time since March.
At five the nurses from table four came to the little gray house with a garment bag and a curling iron.
The dress was mine this time.
Cream, simple, with straps, bought with my own tips from the coffee can.
They did my hair down.
At six-thirty I walked the three docks to Sallie's.
The whole creek was there.
Every regular.
The softball team, the contractors, somebody's grandmother in a church hat.
The band from the fish camp played on Lawton's pallet stage.
The shrimp boats rocked against the pilings, flags snapping, and the men on their decks took off their caps when I went by.
The fry cook had painted a sign.
SALLIE'S. CLOSED FOR A WEDDING. OPEN AGAIN AT NINE.
The oysters were already steaming under wet burlap on the steel sheet.
Lawton stood at the end of the dock in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
No tuxedo.
No tie.
The pink scar on his left forearm caught the sun.
Clancy stood beside him with a printed certificate in a plastic sleeve.
He'd been ordained on the internet on Tuesday, and he'd shown it to everybody at the bar.
Sallie stood on Lawton's other side.
The baby was asleep in her arms in a tiny Sallie's T-shirt that came down to his feet.
I walked down the dock alone.
Nobody gave me away.
When I got to the end, Lawton was looking at me the way he had on the roof.
As if I were the only lit thing on the creek.
"Dearly beloved," Clancy said, very loud.
The whole dock laughed.
"Indoor voice," Sallie said.
"We're outdoors, Sallie."
"Then use it anyway."
He didn't, and nobody wanted him to.
Lawton said his vows in his quiet voice.
He didn't make a speech.
He'd made his last speech in a ballroom, about somebody else.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of I Was His Wife, She Was His Everything are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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