They Left Me at the Canyon, So I Came Back for the Wedding novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Borrowed Clothes

Caleb wakes in Carrie's cabin and finds the $52,000 wedding fund gone. The venue calls to say Joanna has offered his Saturday to herself and Brett.

I woke up on a couch that smelled like pine and dog.

Gray light came through a small window, and somewhere a pan was sizzling.

I was wearing a flannel shirt three sizes too wide, with the sleeves rolled to my elbows.

Carrie had handed it to me the night before, with a towel.

"It's my brother's," she'd said. "He won't miss it. He's in Alaska, being a fisherman about it."

I sat up.

My phone was on the arm of the couch, plugged into her charger.

It said 7:12 and forty-one missed calls.

Thirty-six of them were from numbers I didn't know.

I put it face down.

"Breakfast," Carrie called. "It's eggs. If you don't eat eggs, you're out of luck."

I walked into a kitchen the size of a closet.

She stood at the stove in a gray T-shirt, her braid loose over one shoulder, flipping eggs with a spatula.

She looked at me and her mouth twitched.

"The sleeves help," she said. "You look like a lost lumberjack."

"I've been called worse."

"By your fiancee?"

"By my fiancee, last week, because I wouldn't try the cilantro."

"She sounds like a joy."

I sat at the small table, and she put a plate in front of me.

The eggs were perfect, and I realized I hadn't eaten since a gas-station sandwich the day before.

I ate all of it.

She watched me do it and didn't say a word.

"Thank you," I said. "For the plate. For the siren. For all of it."

"The siren wasn't me."

"You know what I mean."

"I do." She leaned on the counter with her coffee. "I called my supervisor at six. The gate log is in the office safe, with the guard's statement. I wrote one too. Time, car, what the woman said."

"You didn't have to do that."

"I've checked the lot every night for six months," Carrie said. "One of those cars drove off with a person still in the park. That's mine to write down."

I looked at my plate.

"What do I do now?" I said.

She shrugged.

"Normally I'd say go home, call a lawyer and sleep a lot. But your phone's been going since five, so I don't think you're sleeping."

"Everyone's asking me what I did."

"What did you do?"

"I took forty pictures of a canyon."

She laughed, one short real laugh, and something in my chest let go.

My phone buzzed against the couch cushion in the next room.

I got up and turned it over.

There was a text from Rachel.

I'm at Salt Lake. Landed 6:50. Renting a car. Don't answer anyone. Don't post. I'm bringing your passport from my safe. I read it twice.

Rachel hadn't liked Joanna's smile since the first dinner.

She had never said so, and she had never been wrong.

I texted back: I'm at a ranger's cabin. Her name's Carrie Halvorsen. I'll send you the road.

Rachel wrote: Is she nice?

I looked up.

Carrie was rinsing the pan, her back to me.

She had given me her spare pillow and a blanket, and she had slept in the next room with the door shut.

I typed: Very.

Then I opened my bank app.

It needed my face, and my face said it was me.

The checking account was a little over three hundred dollars, which was right.

I opened the savings account, the joint one.

I stopped breathing.

The balance said $0.00.

Last week it had said $52,000.

That was my father's life insurance, every dollar of it, saved for the wedding, with both our names on it.

I scrolled to the transactions.

Yesterday at 4:14 p.m., while I was walking the ridge trail, a transfer had gone out.

The payee read: Marlow Hall Events LLC.

Under it was a second transfer, smaller, to an account I didn't recognize.

"Carrie," I said.

She was beside me before I said another word.

She read the screen and her face went still.

"Is that yours?"

"It was my dad's."

"Okay." Her voice went very even. "Don't touch anything. Take a screenshot. Then we call your bank."

I took the screenshot.

My hands were steady.

The rest of me felt far away.

The phone rang in my hand.

It was an Ohio number I knew from the wedding folder.

I answered, because I wanted to hear it.

"Mr. Dunning? This is the events manager at Marlow Hall," a woman said. "I'm sorry to call so early. I wanted to confirm before I processed it."

"Confirm what?"

"Ms. Haskell called yesterday and said you'd withdrawn from the arrangement. She asked to transfer your Saturday booking to herself and a Mr. Brett Carraway. She said you'd agreed."

I looked at Carrie.

Carrie looked at me.

"Saturday in three weeks?" I said.

"Yes. The ceremony and the hundred and forty guests. She said the deposit would stay as it is, since it's already paid."

My voice came out strange and quiet.

"Don't process anything," I said. "I'll be there Thursday."

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