Chapter 17: The Receiving Line

Hugh came down the steps with both hands out and his best voice on.

"Lee. Thank God. You're out. Come inside with me, sweetheart, you've had a terrible morning."

He had a gift for it.

Three guests slowed to watch the loving brother reach for his sick sister.

I stopped on the walk, and Ansel stopped beside me.

"Hugh," Ansel said.

My brother's hands fell.

He had not expected the voice, or the man who went with it.

"Mr. Winslow," Hugh said, with a thin smile. "I'm told you've been very helpful to my sister. Thank you. I'll take it from here."

"No," said Ansel.

"This is a family matter."

"I know. I'm the family."

Hugh looked at me.

I held up my left hand, so the light off the harbor caught the platinum.

"Eleven weeks," I said. "It was a plain wedding. You'd have hated the flowers."

His face went smooth and blank.

For one second I saw him add it all up, his own brother's face in the investigator's photo, the Norwegian RSVP, the order.

Then he got his smile back.

"Well," he said. "Let's go in, then. Let's all go in."

I understood that he thought he could still win it inside.

Ansel put his hand at the small of my back, and I let it stay.

We went through the glass doors together, with Ruth and her lawyer behind us.

The ballroom was white and gold, hung with strings of tiny lights, and warm after the wind.

Near the doors the bride and groom stood in the receiving line, shaking hands.

They'd come straight from the photographs, and Vivienne's cheeks were pink.

Clay was in the middle of a joke with a guest, and he was laughing.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Made Me Sign, Not Knowing I Was Another's Wife from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.