After I Learned I Was Going to Be His Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 31 of 32
Chapter 31: Nobody Dies
The invitation was an index card.
YOU ARE INVITED TO A MURDER WHERE NOBODY DIES. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. KNOCK TWICE.
Zelda had written it. She'd made the twins hand-letter sixty of them.
"Why does nobody die?" I asked.
"Because I'm not dying at your wedding," she said. "For once in my life, I'm living. I've earned it."
The speakeasy was full by seven.
Gran sat at the front, in pearls and a lilac hat she'd bought for the occasion and called "a mistake I'm committed to."
Maxine had made a cake shaped like a stack of index cards. It was five layers high and slightly leaning.
"It's leaning on purpose," she told everyone. "It's a metaphor. Don't touch it."
Edmund's ex-wife sat in a booth with the bakery owner and his daughter, who was filming.
The detective came with her husband and a gift wrapped in brown paper. It turned out to be a magnifying glass.
The diner waitress from Lincoln came in her good coat, and cried before anything happened at all.
[THE WAITRESS CAME]
[everyone came. everyone's here]
I wore my good green dress, the vintage silk one with buttons down the back.
Benedict wore his charcoal three-piece and his steel watch, and no tie, on purpose.
He stood at the front of the little stage beside Gran, with his hands folded, looking like a man about to be sentenced.
"Places," said our old Hamlet, and the lights went down.
The plot was simple. Zelda had written it in one night.
Ten minutes before the vows, the rings vanished from their velvet box on the bar.
The twins accused each other. Our accent man accused the twins in four different accents.
The new kid stood behind the bar polishing a glass and looking innocent, and everyone accused him on principle.
"I'm not even the bartender tonight," he said. "I'm a guest."
"Exactly what the bartender would say," said our accent man, as a Scottish laird.
Maxine accused the cake.
Gran stood up with her cane and walked slowly along the bar.
She stopped at the end, by the dessert counter, and pointed.
Under the glass dome, curled around the stack-of-cards cake, sat Columbo.
He looked at all of us with his one good eye.
Two gold rings were hooked over his collar.
"The ring bearer," Gran said, "did it."
The room fell apart laughing.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of After I Learned I Was Going to Be His Ex-Wife are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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