He Sent a Proxy Groom, So I Walked Away Forever novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six Hundred Dollars

Lena learns Cal took $600 to stand beside her and accuses him of selling out again; Hallie arrives with her bag and notices Gwendolyn wearing Lena's mother's pearls.

Cal stood in the parking lot with the paper mask at his feet and didn't say anything else.

He looked older.

His jaw had a short dark beard now, and the scar through his left eyebrow had gone pale.

I had been holding that eyebrow in my memory for seven years, angry.

"You," I said.

"I didn't know it was you," Cal said. "The listing said a stand-in groom for a wedding, twenty minutes, the bride knows."

"The bride knows."

"That's what it said. Then the officiant said Lena Okerlund, and I was already standing there."

"And you stayed."

"You'd already seen me. Walking out would have made it worse for you."

That was an answer, and I hated that it was a decent one.

"How much did they pay you?" I asked.

He took a second too long.

"Six hundred dollars."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"Six hundred. To stand next to me while three hundred people filmed it."

"My transmission died on Tuesday," he said. "I took the job on Thursday. I'm not proud of it."

"You've done this before? Rented yourself out?"

"Funerals. A dad for a school night. Once, a guy at a retirement party." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Never a wedding."

I stared at him.

"Brooks told me you took eight thousand dollars from his mother to leave town," I said. "I believed him for seven years."

"Brooks told you what?"

His whole face changed.

Whatever he had been about to say, he put it down.

"Don't act hurt," I said. "You left. You left the week my mom got her diagnosis, and I called you a dozen times."

"I got a text, Lena."

"From who?"

A shutter clicked behind him.

The photographer had come down the steps and stopped by the caterer's van.

His lens was trained on Cal's bare face.

Cal turned, took one step, and put his open hand flat over the front of the camera.

"Not today, pal," he said.

The photographer lowered it a few inches and didn't leave.

He looked up at the doors, then back at us, and stayed where he was.

"Who's he working for?" Cal asked me.

"The Courtlands," I said. "They hired him for the wedding."

"The wedding's over."

"Then I don't know what he's doing out here."

Cal looked at me for a long moment.

"I'm going to tell you what happened to that envelope," he said, "and it isn't what you think. But not while you're standing in a parking lot in your wedding dress."

"I don't want your story."

"You will. When you're done being angry, you'll want it."

"I'm not done."

"Okay," he said, and stayed where he was, on my left.

The side doors burst open, and Hallie came down the steps two at a time with her bridesmaid dress bunched in one fist.

She had my handbag over her shoulder and both of our coats in her other arm.

She was in sneakers, which she must have been keeping under the pew.

"I got your keys," she said, a little breathless. "I got your phone charger, I got the good lipstick. I got your bouquet, sorry, it's a little crushed."

"Hallie."

"I would like to kill every person in there. I just want you to know that's my position."

"Hallie, this is Cal."

She looked at him.

She looked at the mask on the asphalt, then back at him.

"The carpenter?" she said. "That Cal?"

"That Cal."

"Hello, that Cal." She took her time looking him up and down. "You took six hundred dollars?"

"Seven years too late to defend myself," Cal said. "Yes."

"Good answer. I'm still going to be rude to you."

"That seems fair."

Hallie turned back to me and her face dropped, all the jokes gone.

"Lena, listen. I went in the hall to find the bathroom, and the reception line was already forming around Gwendolyn."

"They're having a reception?"

"They're having a party. Brooks's cousins. The golf people. They're drinking the champagne we paid for." She swallowed. "And Lena, she's wearing them."

"Wearing what?"

"Your mother's pearls," Hallie said. "Gwendolyn is wearing your mother's pearls."

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