Chapter 17: If Anyone Objects

I read as much of Ray's notebook as I could in the cab of Ryan's truck.

Ryan drove, and Kat fixed her braid in the mirror.

It took me forty minutes, and it was worse than I'd hoped and better than I'd feared.

Ray wrote everything down.

He trusted paper more than people.

He had never imagined his paper could end up in someone else's bag.

I found the first page that mattered on page nine and shut the book on it.

"Don't tell me yet," Kat said.

"I wasn't going to."

"Is it enough?"

"It's his handwriting and his dates."

I tucked the notebook flat inside my bouquet of wild asters.

"It's enough if I get to read it out loud."

"You can't read it before the vows," Ryan said. "He'll say it was stolen."

"He dropped it in my bag."

"Then he'll say you took it."

"Then I'll wait until he stands up," I said. "Ray can't help himself. He's been waiting for a crowd since Tuesday."

Kat laughed, and it came out half sob.

By two o'clock the whole valley was sitting in folding chairs on the pasture beside the creek.

Someone had tied ribbons to the fence posts.

The sky was a hard bright blue, and the aspens on the far bank had turned gold.

I walked the grass path first, in the maid-of-honor dress that cost two hundred forty dollars.

My bouquet had Ray's notebook in it.

Eighty faces turned to watch me.

I found Ray in the second row, with the county clerk on his right and his hands folded on his belt buckle.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I'm Still In Love With the Groom from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.