My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Every Line
She gave it to me that night, in her hotel room, with the ocean outside the window.
A cream envelope, soft at the corners.
My name on the front in my father's square, plain hand.
For Sadie. On her wedding day.
"He wrote it the summer you left for UCLA," my mother said. "He put it in his desk and told me not to read it."
"Did you?"
"Of course I did." She sat down on the end of the bed. "Twice. Then I put it back."
Inside was one page.
And a pen.
A heavy old fountain pen, black, with a gold band worn dull where his thumb used to go.
I unfolded the letter.
Kiddo.
If you're reading this, your mother found my desk, and you're getting married. Congratulations. I hope I'm there. If I'm not, I hope you're laughing.
Here's my one piece of advice, and then I'll leave you alone.
Marry somebody who'll wait while you read the fine print.
Love, Dad.
P.S. Don't let your mother pick the music.
I read it four times.
Then I put my face in my hands and cried.
My mother didn't say anything.
She just sat next to me on the bed with her hand on my back until I was done.
"He'd have liked Caelen," she said finally.
"You think?"
"He'd have hated the cereal." She stood up. "But he'd have liked him."
We got married on a Saturday in October, one year almost to the day after the fake one.
On the back porch of the triple-decker in South Boston.
No ballroom. No string quartet. No license table with little yellow flags.
The porch light buzzed overhead, because nobody had ever fixed it, and nobody wanted to.
The four analysts strung lights along the railing.
The retired teacher flew in from Pasadena with a suitcase full of lemons.
The litigator came, with her canvas tote and her car alarm laugh.
Even the white-haired man from the board came.
He stood at the bottom of the back stairs in a bow tie, looking embarrassed to be moved.
His grandmother had cooked for four days.
Chowder. A roast. Potatoes three ways.
Six pies with lattice tops.
Not one cake.
My mother walked me down the back stairs from the third floor.
She wore navy.
I wore a plain ivory dress I'd bought in Boston, with long sleeves and no veil.
Halfway down, on the fourth step, the one that creaked, she stopped.
"Ready?"
"I've been ready since September."
"I meant the music," she said. "I let his grandmother pick it."
I laughed all the way down the rest of the stairs.
Caelen was waiting on the second-floor landing, by the post.
The same post.
He was in a navy suit, and his tie was straight.
He looked completely dazed, overwhelmed with gratitude.
The officiant was a judge my mother had known for thirty years.
She kept it short.
When she got to the vows, Caelen went first.
"I called you a fraud in front of a board of directors," he said. "I was wrong. I'll probably be wrong again. When I am, I'll say so in front of whoever's in the room."
His grandmother sniffed loudly.
"I will never hand you anything you haven't read," he said. "And I'll wait as long as it takes you to read it."
Then it was my turn.
I had a card.
I didn't open it.
"You checked," I said. "Every time. Before every single thing."
He nodded.
"I love you," I said. "I've read every line. I'm sure."
The judge pronounced us married.
He kissed me against the porch post in front of everyone we loved, until his grandmother told him to save something for later.
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