Chapter 4: Two Weddings, One Hallway

Kaylee swung her phone around so the camera caught me.

"Oh my God, you guys," she told it. "Look who's here. The bride who proposed to the wife-killer."

"Ten o'clock is ours," Hayden said, walking up the hall. "Nine is yours, I hear. We'll try not to make it awkward."

"You couldn't help it if you tried," I said.

Anson stood up from the bench and handed me a coffee.

Kaylee read the comments out loud, delighted.

"Somebody says check her for bruises in a month. Somebody says, girl, run." She grinned at me. "That one's for you."

Then I heard boots on the stairs.

My bolt-up partner came around the corner first, in jeans and her orange hard hat, with a grocery store bouquet under her arm.

The old connector came behind her in his one good sport coat and his hard hat.

The apprentice held his hat in both hands.

"You need two witnesses," my partner said. "We brought three, in case one faints."

I looked past them at the stairs.

Nobody else came up.

"He'll come around," my partner said. "Stubborn old Irishman. You know where you got it."

The judge's clerk opened the door. "Strahan and Dunleavy?"

Kaylee laughed. "Which ones?"

The judge was a small woman with reading glasses on a chain.

She looked at my crew's hard hats and didn't comment.

It took four minutes.

Anson took a narrow gold band out of his pocket and put it on my finger.

It fit.

I hadn't told him my size.

"I don't have one for you," I said.

"Hang on," said the apprentice.

He dug in the pouch on his belt and came up with a stainless steel washer.

My partner laughed so loud the judge jumped.

I slid it onto Anson's finger.

It went over the knuckle with a little push and sat there, shining.

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