Chapter 6: The Loan

I read it out loud.

Maggie said a word I've never heard a mother of three say.

Wells held out his hand for the phone. He read it twice and handed it back.

"Nineteen four," he said. "Thirty days."

"I have six thousand in the business account."

"Then you need thirteen four."

He said it.

I slept on the cot in the back of the shop that night, and the next, and the one after that.

On Sunday I went to the apartment while Kellan was at his parents'. I packed two suitcases and my mother's sewing box.

I left the cream towels.

The video had two million views by Monday.

People had made it into songs. Someone had slowed down "a bag of bones" and put it over a sad piano.

My mother's veil wasn't on the ballroom carpet when I called the hotel on Sunday.

They said housekeeping must have thrown it out with the flowers.

I hung up and sat on the floor of the cooler for a while.

Kellan came to the shop on Monday, May 18, at ten in the morning.

It was my busiest hour.

Four customers in line.

A man buying tulips for his wife.

Two college girls who had obviously come to look at me.

Kellan stood in the doorway in a gray suit. He looked like he hadn't slept.

"Bren. Can we talk somewhere private?"

"No."

He glanced at the customers.

He lowered his voice.

"I'm not here to fight. I want to fix this."

"Okay."

"The video is hurting my father's company. Investors are calling. People think I'm some kind of monster."

"You slept with my best friend on my mother's veil," I said. "In a hotel. An hour before our wedding."

The man with the tulips turned slowly around.

Kellan's ears went red.

"Post an apology. Say you were overwhelmed. Say you got the wrong idea." He took out his phone.

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