He Stood Me Up, so I Married His Brother novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: He Always Comes

By nine, three customers had cancelled.

A gutter job in Ardsley Park. A reroof on Habersham. A church in Thunderbolt that had been with my daddy for twenty years.

The church secretary was polite about it.

"We just can't be in the middle of all that," she said. "You understand."

I said I understood. I didn't.

Tammy came by the carriage house at noon with two sandwiches and a face.

"Four hundred comments," she said. "Somebody called you a home-wrecker in Portuguese."

"Did you read them all?"

"I read enough to want to fight a lady in Ohio."

Thatcher had already left for work. He'd written on a sticky note by the stove.

"Don't read the comments. Don't drink the coffee."

Tammy read it and snorted.

"He's funny," she said, like it was an accusation.

"Sometimes."

"I hate that he's funny."

After she left, I sat in Thatcher's armchair with my laptop.

I didn't read the comments.

I opened Ivey's channel and found the series. "He Always Comes."

Twenty-six videos.

I started at number one.

January, a year and a half ago. Ivey in a hospital gown, Crosby holding her hand. "He left his own appointment for me," she whispered to the camera.

His own appointment was me. We'd had number fourteen.

I almost closed it.

Then I saw the edge of the frame.

Behind Crosby's shoulder, through the glass doors of the probate court lobby, there was a woman in a white dress, standing alone.

Me.

I paused it and stared at my own back.

I opened number two.

Ivey on the floor of a parking garage, her ankle wrapped. In the reflection of a car window, a white sundress. Me again, at the bottom of the courthouse steps, looking at my phone.

Number three. Number four.

I stopped watching the videos and started watching the corners.

Number seven, me on a bench, my bouquet of grocery-store daisies in my lap.

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