Back to the 80s novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: St. Michael's

He kissed me.

His mouth was hot and hard and slow, and one big hand slid into my hair and held my head.

The other flattened against my back and pulled me up against him.

I felt every inch of him through the thin green silk.

I felt how much he meant it.

I made a sound against his lip that I would have been embarrassed to hear on a tape.

He broke off, breathing hard, his forehead against mine.

"Saturday," he said, in a ruined voice. "I'll wait till Saturday."

"I didn't say I'd wait."

"Lorna."

"I said I'd decide," I said. "I haven't decided yet."

He laughed, short and surprised, the first real laugh I'd heard from him.

Then he drove me home to the house I was leaving, and he kissed my hand at the door.

It was the worst thing he could have done to me.

I lay awake until four.

St. Michael's was an old gray stone church with a bell that rang off-key.

By Saturday morning it held two hundred people, half of them Ellacombe friends who had come to see what would happen.

Margaret did my hair in the vestry herself, with the priest's cough coming through the wall.

She said nothing until the veil was on.

"You think you've won something," she said to the mirror.

"I think I've got a ride out of your house."

"Vivian will be in the second pew." She pinned the lace. "Vivian has a plan. You'll see."

"Is the plan a drummer?"

Her hand stopped.

Then she smiled at me in the glass, and for the first time that smile was something I was afraid of.

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