My Best Friend Took My Wedding, So I Fed the Whole Town novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Permit

"Not tonight," I told Brynja, and I kept my eyes on the grill.

"Sunny, I'm the only one who knows why she did it."

"Not tonight. Not in front of them. One sentence doesn't make us even."

She stood there another moment.

Then she picked up her shoes and walked back down the pier alone, past two hundred turned shoulders.

Nobody stopped her, and nobody offered her a ride.

Sunday the town did our dishes.

Monday was Labor Day, and the harbor families asked whether there would be a second dinner.

"There's no food left," I told the nets man.

"There's always food," he said. "People will bring it."

They did.

By five o'clock on Monday there were ninety covered dishes on the pier, and a wheelbarrow of sweet corn from a farm up the shore road.

Lasse had smoked a whitefish the size of a toddler.

I was cutting it into portions, with a knife that was too small, when the deputy's cruiser came down Harbor Road with its lights turning.

Not the siren, only the lights.

He parked across the head of the pier and walked out slowly with a clipboard in his hand.

He was thirty-four, and wide in the shoulders, and in the fall he coached the high school football team.

I had known him since I was in second grade, and I had never once seen him write anything down.

"Evening, Sunny," he said.

"Evening."

"I've got a notice here from the mayor's office." He held up the paper so the people nearest could see the stamp. "The public dock permit for assembly is revoked as of noon. No gatherings, no food service, no open flame."

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