Chapter 23: The Studs

"Yes," said Imogen.

She lifted the gold ring out of the dented red mug with two fingers, and wiped it on her sleeve, and put it on before he could stand up.

Then she pulled him up by the front of his hoodie and kissed him across the white tablecloth, and knocked over a candle.

"That's a nine," she said.

"You're allowed to keep going."

The wedding was the next afternoon, at the Oakes house, in the garden that overlooked the water.

It had thirty chairs. Nobody had been invited who had not already been told the truth.

Winifred sat in the front row with her cane across her knees and a small white box on her lap.

The treasurer had come in a tie with a bluebird on it. The doorman stood at the back, holding nothing, which seemed to trouble him.

Griffin stood under the trellis in a suit, with his cap in his hand.

The suit was black and perfect. The knees were whole.

Imogen had ordered it herself, and had told the tailor, in writing, to leave the knees alone.

"I'm told you've something to do first," Delphine said, from the front. She was crying and enjoying it.

"Yes."

He put the cap in his mother's lap.

Then he lifted his hand to his left ear, and found the first of the silver studs by feel, and took it out.

He set it in his palm.

"I bought this one in Athens," he said, to the thirty chairs. "A woman at the ferry office looked at my drawing for a long time and said no."

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