Chapter 22: Vows

Delaney's POV

The chairwoman's garden ran down to the water in three green terraces.

By eleven o'clock the sun had burned off the fog.

There were twenty chairs set out on the lawn.

Hannah sat in the front row in a yellow dress, with a packet of tissues in each hand.

Marissa sat beside her.

She had come with her father, a stooped, gentle man in a borrowed jacket, who held his hat in his lap and looked at the sea.

At seven that morning she had texted me.

It said: The bank called. The loan is void, because it was paid with stolen money. I don't know how to say thank you.

I had written back: Come to the wedding.

I stood on the stone path at the top of the lawn with a bouquet that Hannah had picked out of the chairwoman's own flower beds.

I wore a short white silk dress.

I had bought it at six that morning from a boutique that opened its doors early for a very large sum.

Weston waited at the bottom of the lawn in a gray suit, under an arch of climbing roses.

He had not slept either.

I could tell from how straight he stood, with his hands clasped in front of him.

His eyes went over the garden, the guests and the house, and back to the path, over and over.

He was afraid I would not come down it.

I came down the path.

The chairwoman stood between us, small and straight in dark blue, with her interpreter beside her.

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