He Sent a Proxy Groom, So I Walked Away Forever novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Pearls

Lena goes back in front of the remaining guests and takes the pearls off Gwendolyn herself; Brooks walks in with Delaney wearing Lena's ring.

I went back in through the side doors with Hallie on my right and Cal a step behind my left shoulder.

Nobody had told him to come.

He didn't ask whether I wanted him to.

The great room at Courtland Hall had been set for our reception, with white tablecloths, three hundred glasses and a harpist who had stopped playing.

Half the guests stood in clumps with their phones down, watching me cross the floor in my dress.

The other half stood in line to kiss Gwendolyn's cheek.

She was under the chandelier in her dove-gray suit, receiving them.

My mother's pearls lay against her collar, two strands of small, even pearls.

My mother had worn them at her own wedding and at every Christmas Eve of my life.

"Lena, darling." Gwendolyn opened her arms. "You poor thing. You're in shock."

I stopped an arm's length away.

"Those are my mother's pearls," I said.

"And I've kept them so safe." She touched them lightly. "You handed them to me yourself, remember? For the photographer."

"For the detail shot. You said you'd hand them back at the reception."

"And here is the reception." She gave a small laugh, and a few people near her laughed with her. "We'll sort it out when you've had some water."

"Take them off."

"Not in front of people. You're upset."

"Then people should watch." I kept my voice level. "Take them off, Gwendolyn, or I will."

The line behind her went quiet.

A woman in a green hat said, "Lena, honey, let's not make this uglier."

"She asked once," said Hallie, loudly. "That's once more than anybody asked her about the mask."

Gwendolyn's smile didn't move.

She looked at me and counted how many people were listening.

Then she lifted both hands to the back of her neck, undid the clasp, and held the pearls out on her palm.

"Of course," she said. "I only wanted to protect them."

I took them.

They were warm from her skin, and I had to hold them in both hands to stop them from shaking.

"Here is what happened," I said, and I turned so the room could hear me with my left ear. "An hour ago Brooks's mother told me his flight was stuck in Chicago."

Nobody moved.

"She told me Courtland men marry by proxy. She took my mother's pearls off my neck. And all afternoon his phone has been ringing in her purse."

I pointed at the handbag on the chair behind her.

Several people looked.

"I put $48,000 of my mother's life insurance into this party," I said. "Every glass in here is mine."

"Lena." Gwendolyn lowered her voice into something warm and private. "Nobody is disputing what you gave. It was a gift to the family. Brooks will see to it that you're comfortable."

"I don't want to be comfortable. I want my money."

"Then you'll have to discuss that with Brooks, who is, as you say, in Chicago."

She said it with a perfectly straight face.

Behind me, on the terrace side of the room, a glass door slid open.

A hush moved across the floor from the lake end of the room to the front.

Brooks walked in.

He wasn't wearing a suit, and he had no luggage.

He wore a pale blue polo and boat shoes, with a lake tan and a drink in his hand, and he was in no hurry.

A woman in a white sundress was holding his other arm.

I knew her.

Delaney Prewitt, from the golf club, who had come to our engagement party and cried at the toast.

Brooks stopped when he saw me, and he had the grace to look briefly sick.

"Lena," he said. "Babe. Come on. It was a joke."

I had been engaged to him for fourteen months, and I had never heard him say anything hard in his life.

I looked at the sapphire on my own left hand, his grandmother's ring, which I'd had on all day because I'd forgotten it was there.

I worked it over my knuckle and held it out.

"Here," I said. "Give this to someone who'll enjoy it."

Brooks didn't move.

Delaney reached across him, took the ring out of my fingers and slid it onto her own hand.

It fit.

She held it up to the chandelier and smiled at me.

"Delaney, darling," said Gwendolyn, in the gentlest voice she owned. "Not yet."

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