To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: To My Romeo

The McCrackens' backyard was not made for four hundred and twelve people.

They came anyway, and stood on the lawn, on the neighbors' lawns, and along the fence in lawn chairs they had brought themselves.

At the back of the garden, by the compost bin, a woman in a gray coat stood alone with her hands folded.

I had told Marge to write back one sentence: You may stand there, and you will not speak to me.

Shelby had stood there for the whole ceremony, and nobody had looked at her.

I did not look at her either.

At the other end of the lawn stood the new trellis, in white cedar.

My father and Fraser had built it, and a climbing rose was already in bloom on it.

It was a good trellis. Dad had made every rung twice as thick as it needed to be.

I walked toward it on my father's arm, in a plain ivory dress with short sleeves and a low back.

My hair had come in an inch long, dark and soft as a duckling, and I'd put a single white rose behind one ear.

I had expected to feel naked.

I felt tall.

Dad said nothing the entire length of the lawn, and at the end he kissed my cheek.

His hand shook when he gave mine to Fraser.

Fraser wore a navy suit that Teddy had bullied him into, with a flannel-patterned tie.

His glasses were polished.

His beard had been trimmed by a professional and looked worse.

He looked at me.

The pastor, in a cardigan, kept the ceremony short.

When he reached the vows, Fraser took out a scrap of folded paper from his pocket, looked at it, and put it away again.

"I wrote this down," he said, "and then I decided you already know it."

"Say it anyway," I said.

A ripple of laughter went through the lawn.

"I love you," he said. "I'll fix the faucet. I'll be loud when it's hard and quiet when it's good."

"I'll be sitting on the stairs if you tell me to go."

"That's not a vow," Teddy called. "That's a threat."

"It's both."

My turn.

My throat shut.

I looked at the roses, and Marge crying into a napkin.

The small boy in a bow tie in the third row, who had been discharged in June and had refused to miss the party.

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