He Said Apologize, I Said the Wedding Is Off novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: What Cal Saw

Cal's POV

I watched the whole brunch from the doorway of the lodge, with my cap in my hand and a coffee going cold.

Mother had told me to wait outside.

I had told her I'd wait inside, near the door, in case anything needed throwing.

Greta Holm walked up to that head table with my mother beside her and a bandage on her thumb, and she asked for her grandmother's brooch in front of thirty people.

I have known a lot of people who can shout.

I don't know many who can ask one plain question and stand there until it gets answered.

When it was over she walked out past me, and her face was white and fixed.

"You okay?" I said.

"Fine," she said, and kept going.

She did not look fine.

I let her go to Mother's truck.

Then somebody touched my sleeve.

She was young, maybe twenty-five, with her coat on inside out and a face I knew from the bait counter.

She'd come to the brunch with Marcy, and I had seen her holding Marcy's phone.

"Can I talk to you?" she said. "Not here."

We walked around the side of the lodge, where the plows had made a wall of snow.

She kept looking over her shoulder.

"I didn't say anything," she said. "You never talked to me."

"Fine."

"The messages. The ones with the engagement picture." She swallowed. "Marcy didn't get them from anywhere. She wrote them."

I waited.

"She had me read them out loud on Wednesday. At her kitchen table. She wanted to know if they sounded mean enough."

"Mean enough for what?"

"For people to believe," the girl said. "I told her they sounded like nobody. They didn't have commas."

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