Skipped by the Altar, Taken by His Uncle novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Not His Wife

Two hundred faces turned toward me, glowing and kind, waiting for the bride to cry.

Blaine held his champagne up and waited with them.

He thought I'd smile. I'd always smiled.

I walked to the stage.

The crowd opened for me.

Blaine came down one step to take my hand, still beaming for Corrie's phone.

I walked past his hand and up to the podium.

The page was still on it. Georgia, twelve point.

I picked up the microphone.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Rhea Pritchard. I write the obituaries."

A few people laughed, unsure.

"I'm not his wife."

The laughing stopped.

"I was supposed to be. Ask him where he was at ten-forty."

Somebody near the bar said, "Oh my God," out loud.

"So I'm not his wife," I said. "And I never will be."

Blaine reached for the microphone.

I turned my shoulder to him and kept it.

"That speech you just heard," I said. "The man with the bell over the door. He had a name, and it was painted on the side of his building, and it's on the sign right behind me."

I pointed at the backdrop without looking at it.

"Pritchard Hardware. He was my father. He died three years ago in March, and I wrote that eulogy, and I read it in the Methodist church with his reading glasses in my pocket."

The terrace was so quiet I could hear the river.

"Blaine cut the last line. It's not about him, so I see why."

I put the page down.

"He'd sell you one nail," I said, "if one nail was all you needed."

Nobody moved.

Then, down front, an old man started to laugh.

It wasn't a polite laugh. It was a big, wheezing bark, and it went on, and he slapped his cane across his own knees.

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