Oops, Wrong Bride? Fine. No Wedding. novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Courthouse Steps

"The Mattox Bakehouse," I said.

Trey nodded miserably.

"In my mother's building."

"I tried to talk her out of it. She doesn't listen to me." He rubbed his neck. "She never has. I just used to pretend that was on purpose."

He walked back out to the town car.

I sat down on my mother's bench, between the old man and the choir woman, and did math on my fingers.

Two weeks later I had the sixty-two thousand from Trey.

I had eighty-eight thousand from the Oops cakes.

Emmy had posted one line under a photo of the foreclosure notice: "Buy a cake, save her mama's bakery."

The orders crashed our site twice.

And I had a loan from a little bank in Mount Pleasant.

I read every single line of it out loud at Hayes's kitchen table at midnight, all forty-one pages, while he fell asleep sitting up.

On Monday, August third, at eleven in the morning, it was ninety-six degrees on the courthouse steps on Broad Street.

Three hundred people were waiting.

Women in sundresses and scrubs held up white cake boxes like signs.

The regulars from King Street had come, and the old man with his hat.

The woman in the yellow hat was filming, and the food writer from Atlanta fanned herself with a program.

Emmy stood beside me with Biscuit. Hayes stood on my other side. His crew had made a wall behind us.

Mrs. Mattox sat on a folding chair under an umbrella her driver held over her, with a lawyer in a seersucker suit.

She didn't look at me. She didn't look at Hayes either.

My father stood at the bottom of the steps, by himself, in his navy suit with no pin on the lapel.

Across Broad Street, under a shop awning in big sunglasses, stood Shelby.

The auctioneer was a sweating man in a bow tie.

He read the property description, and I didn't hear any of it except "King Street" and "bakery."

"Opening bid from the bank is seven hundred thousand," he said. "Do I hear seven ten?"

I raised my hand.

"Seven ten. Seven twenty?"

Mrs. Mattox's lawyer lifted one finger.

It went fast after that.

Seven fifty. Seven eighty. Eight hundred.

Every time I raised my hand the crowd behind me made a noise. Every time the lawyer lifted his finger, three hundred people booed.

"Eight seventy-five. Do I hear nine hundred?"

Nine hundred was my number. Every dollar I had, every dollar the bank would give me.

I raised my hand.

"Nine hundred. Nine ten?"

Mrs. Mattox leaned over and said something to her lawyer.

He lifted his finger.

"Nine ten, from the gentleman."

I had nothing past nine hundred.

Hayes put his hand at my back.

"I've got what's left of my father's money," he said low. "Say the word."

"No," I said. "It has to be mine."

"Liza."

"It has to be mine, Hayes."

He nodded once, and didn't say it again.

Emmy grabbed my arm so hard I yelped.

"Look," she hissed, and shoved her phone under my nose.

The woman in the yellow hat had been streaming the whole auction live.

Under it, our order page.

Two hundred new orders. Three hundred. The number kept climbing while I watched. Thirty-one thousand dollars in ten minutes.

"Nine forty," I said, loud.

The crowd roared.

Mrs. Mattox turned in her chair and looked at me for the first time.

Then she looked past me at the three hundred people with cake boxes, the man from the paper and the food writer from Atlanta.

At Hayes, with his hand on my back.

"You told me I'd be gone by August," I called to her across the steps. "It's August, Mrs. Mattox."

She held my eyes for a long moment.

Then she put her hand on her lawyer's wrist and pushed it down into his lap.

"Nine forty," the auctioneer said, and his voice cracked. "Going once. Going twice."

Nobody moved.

"Sold. To the young lady."

The noise that came off those steps sent pigeons up off the courthouse roof.

Emmy was screaming. Biscuit was barking. The crew was pounding Hayes on the back.

I was looking at my father.

He stood at the bottom of the steps with his hands at his sides.

For one second, he looked up at me.

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