Oops, Wrong Bride? Fine. No Wedding. novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Mama's Bench
I got out of the truck and stood in front of the glass.
Inside, the case was empty. Not even pink cupcakes. The chairs were up on the tables, legs in the air.
My mother's corner table was up there with the rest.
Hayes came and stood beside me.
"August third," he said.
"Three weeks."
"What do you need?"
"Money," I said. "A lot of it. And for my father to stand somewhere public one more time."
He looked at me.
"There's the bench," I said.
The bench had been my father's idea, a year ago.
It was a teak bench under the big magnolia in the church garden, with a brass plaque for my mother.
He'd ordered it for her birthday in July and told everyone at coffee hour about it for months.
He hadn't cancelled it.
Of course he hadn't. It was his best chance to stand in front of the church and look like a widower again.
On the third Sunday in July, about eighty people stood in the church garden after the service with paper cups of lemonade.
The bench sat under the magnolia with a white ribbon across it.
The plaque was covered with a little square of velvet.
My father stood beside it in his navy suit, with a printed speech.
He saw me come through the garden gate and missed a word.
I didn't come alone.
Shelby's mother walked beside me in her navy church dress, holding my arm.
My father cleared his throat and kept going.
"My wife was the heart of this church," he read. "She baked for every funeral, every wedding, every Easter breakfast. She was a loving mother and a devoted wife, and I was blessed to be her husband for twenty-two years."
He pulled the velvet off the plaque.
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