Chapter 23: The Wedding She Never Had

On the morning of the wedding, every pew in the Lakeshore parish church held a spray of white freesia.

The women had done it before dawn.

Forty of them had come through the side door with buckets, and the whole church smelled of freesia.

Cora stood at the back in a plain ivory dress with her hair down.

The doorman from Lenhart Tower stood beside her in a rented suit, with a handkerchief already in his fist.

She had asked him to walk her halfway.

"Halfway, ma'am?" he had said, last night.

"Nobody gives me away," she had told him. "I'm not a thing that gets handed over. But I'd like someone beside me for the first part."

He had cried then, too.

The organ began.

The doors opened, and every head in the church turned.

She saw them all at once.

The pastor's wife, in the front pew in an enormous yellow hat.

The judge from the courthouse, in a navy dress, with her glasses pushed up in her hair.

The cleaner and the security guard from the atrium, side by side, holding the same hymn book.

The court clerk.

The two investigators from the state's attorney's office, who had come off duty and sat at the back, a little awkward.

Forty women in good hats, and not one of them had been invited by a Farwell.

They had come because they wanted to.

Her throat closed.

"Take your time, ma'am," the doorman whispered.

She walked.

Halfway down the aisle he let go of her arm, and nodded, and sat down in a pew.

She went the rest of the way alone.

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