Chapter 23: December Fifth

The fifth of December came in clear and bitterly cold, with a hard blue sky over the harbor.

I woke in my old bedroom at the Point, in the narrow bed with the quilt my mother had made.

The marriage license had been in my bag since Monday.

The clerk at town hall had looked at the two of us, and at the names Lockridge and Kerrigan.

She had said only, "Congratulations," in the careful voice of a woman who read the paper.

Lawrence had signed his half in a hand so steady that it embarrassed me.

I came downstairs at nine, and the whole lawn was full of chairs.

My father stood in the middle of them in his cardigan, with a clipboard, and Teddy was dragging a folding table across the frozen grass.

"A hundred and ten," my father said. "That is the final count. I had a list of two hundred and cut it by hand."

"Who did you cut?"

"Anyone who used the word 'unfortunate' in a note this month."

"Dad."

"I'm a gentle man," my father said, "but I keep records."

The burlap was off the roses.

Somebody had cut the dead canes back to clean green wood, and the long beds looked bare and brave in the sun.

I found out later that the caretaker had done it at dawn, alone, with the shears my mother had left in the shed.

"Where's Lawrence?" I asked.

"In the car," Teddy said. "Parked on the road. He says he doesn't want to come onto the property until he's asked."

I walked down the drive in my coat.

He was behind the wheel with the window down.

He had slept as badly as I had, and it showed.

"You can come in," I said.

"I wanted to wait for it."

"Then I'm saying it."

He got out of the car and stood in front of me in the cold.

"I've thought about it all week," I said. "I don't have a speech."

"You don't need one."

"I do, because I have to say it right. I'm not saying I forgive you because it was small. It wasn't small."

"No."

"I'm saying it because you stood in that foyer and gave away the thing you wanted."

"You told two hundred people what you did, in your own name."

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