Chapter 24: Play

By five on Saturday, Corliss Blooms had been turned inside out.

The worktable stood against the wall with a white cloth on it.

The chairs from the back room were set in rows facing the front window.

Roz had hung the arch.

It was smaller than the club's, only six feet, and made of everything I loved.

There was ranunculus, sweet pea and garden roses.

There were a few stems of gardenia from the plant that had refused to die for twenty years.

I stood in the back room in my grandmother's cream dress, with my hair half up, and tried to breathe.

"You look like a woman about to sign a contract," Roz said.

She wore a black suit with six pockets and a white carnation, and she had never looked happier.

"I am about to sign a contract."

"Good. Don't read it twice. You have guests."

"I'm reading it twice."

"Of course you are."

Through the doorway I could see them filling the chairs.

The landlord was in the front row with his hat on his knee.

His granddaughter sat beside him, looking at her phone and then at me.

The chair of the Junior League sat behind them, in a cardigan, with her husband.

Sam's operations director had come in a green coat and was holding a bouquet of her own for some reason.

The girl in the borrowed veil had come with her new husband.

I had invited them from the license line, and they had said yes.

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