My Groom Walked Out, So His Brother Took His Place novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Brother-in-Law Hands

I sign the register, set the terms in the tack room and let the brother undo forty buttons, then Wendell texts: ask Jude what he knew.

The county clerk was in pew nine, and Alvin Stehling had her in the church office with her laptop inside of ten minutes.

I signed where she pointed.

My signature looked like someone else's, small and crooked, and the pen skipped on the second line.

Jude signed under me in a square, careful hand.

The clerk stamped something and would not meet my eyes.

When she went out, the office was quiet, with a framed picture of Martin Luther on the wall and the sound of two hundred people shuffling in the hall.

I turned to Jude.

"Let's get one thing straight," I said.

"All right."

"I'd have said yes to anybody who walked up that aisle. A stable boy. The pastor. Don't flatter yourself."

His face didn't change.

"Noted," Jude said.

He held the door for me.

It was the only reply he gave, and I thought, good, that's the kind of man he is, nothing in him to hurt.

The reception was already set up in a white tent behind the main house, because Alvin had paid for it in March and a Stehling did not waste a deposit.

There were two hundred people eating brisket in a tent, and every one of them had an opinion about me.

I heard some of it.

"Poor thing," a woman in a green hat said.

"Well, at least it's still a Stehling," her husband said.

Behind them somebody whispered, "Did you see her face?"

My mother found me by the dessert table and held on to my sleeve with both hands.

"Bryn, baby," she said. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, Mama."

"He's not Wendell," she said.

"No," I said. "He isn't."

She had cried through the whole church and her mascara had given up.

She had liked Wendell, I knew that.

Wendell had a way of asking her about her garden.

At eight Alvin tapped a fork against a glass, and the tent went quiet.

He stood at the head table with one hand in his pocket, tall and easy, and told them a story.

It was a good story.

In it a family faced a hard morning, and sons stepped up, and the Stehlings kept their word to the people of this county.

"My son Jude has always been the one who does the thing that needs doing," Alvin said. "And Bryn Roane is the finest vet this county has had since her daddy. I couldn't be prouder of the two of them."

Two hundred people clapped.

I clapped too, because my hands were already doing it.

I noticed that he never said Wendell's name.

Jude sat beside me with his hands flat on the cloth and his eyes on the middle distance, and he did not clap.

At ten the last truck went down the caliche road with its taillights bouncing.

I walked out the back of the tent in a wedding dress, past the barn, and into the tack room.

I don't know why.

It smelled of saddle soap and leather and horse, and it was the only room on the property where nobody wanted anything from me.

I sat on a trunk in a heap of tulle and put my face in my hands.

The door opened.

"I figured," Jude said.

"Go away."

He did not.

He stood in the doorway with his tie off and his sleeves rolled, and the barn light was behind him.

"We should say what this is," he said.

I looked up.

"You want terms," I said.

"Yes."

"Fine. Here are mine," I said.

I stood, and the dress came with me in a long white crash.

"It lasts until the day after the election. Your father wins or loses, and then I'm a divorced woman and you've kept your family's face. Separate rooms. In public I'm your wife and I'll smile. Everywhere else, nothing."

"Nothing," he said.

"I don't want to be touched, Jude. I don't want to be looked after. I want to go to work on Monday and have this be somebody else's problem."

He considered that.

"Until the day after the election," he said. "Separate rooms."

"Yes," I said.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"And don't tell me my groom had cold feet," I said.

"He didn't," Jude said. "He had good legs."

I stared at him.

It was almost a joke.

He didn't smile at it, and neither did I.

He walked me back to the house along the gravel with a space of three feet between us.

The east guest room had a quilt and a lamp and nothing on the walls.

My suitcase was on the bed.

My mother had packed it before the wedding, for a honeymoon in the Keys that was now a cancelled booking.

"Your room's through there," Jude said, and pointed down the hall.

I put my hand behind my back to unzip the dress and found that there was no zipper.

There were forty buttons, small and covered in satin, from my collar to my hips.

My mother had sewn them herself, and she was not here.

I tried for a full minute.

My shoulder cracked and I stopped.

"Jude."

He had been about to leave.

He turned around and saw what I was doing.

"I can't reach," I said. "Don't say anything."

He said nothing.

I turned my back to him and pulled the veil's last pin out of my hair and let the braid fall down my back.

His hands touched the first button.

His knuckles were warm and rough, and they brushed the skin at the nape of my neck, and I stopped breathing for a second.

He worked slowly, down and down.

He had large hands, but he didn't fumble a single one.

I could hear him breathe, and he was breathing slower than a man should.

At the twentieth button the dress began to give, and cool air got in.

At the thirtieth he stopped.

"I can do the rest," I said, though I couldn't.

"No."

His voice was lower.

I felt his thumb rest for a second on the bare place below my shoulder blade.

It stayed there too long.

Neither of us moved.

I thought: if I turn around now, I don't know what happens.

"Careful," I said, and my voice came out hoarse. "That's brother-in-law hands."

I felt him go still.

Then the thumb lifted.

"Husband," Jude said quietly, behind me. "Not brother-in-law. You signed."

He did the last ten buttons in silence, and stepped back.

"Goodnight, Bryn."

The door closed.

I stood in the middle of the room holding my dress up with both arms, with my face hot.

On the bed my phone lit up.

I didn't know the number, but I knew his typing.

Bryn, it's me. I'm so sorry. Ask Jude what he knew.

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