Chapter 37: Bernadette

The cow arrived at nine in the morning, in a horse trailer with a pink ribbon on the hitch.

Jude watched it back down the Grand Hall's service drive from the window of the groom's suite.

He was in his shirtsleeves, with a tie in his hand.

"Ken," he said. "Come look at this."

Ken came to the window with his own tie hanging loose.

Below them, a farmer in his church shirt unlatched the trailer door.

Bernadette stepped out onto the gravel like she had been invited.

She wore a wreath of white roses around her neck.

"That's a real cow," Jude said.

"That's Bernadette."

"Your grandmother said she was bringing the cow."

"I thought she meant the cardboard one."

"Ken. The garden is a hundred yards from that cow."

"I know."

"July has a binder."

"I know," Ken said, and put his forehead against the glass, and laughed until his shoulders shook.

July did not take it as a disaster.

Jude found her ten minutes later on the lawn with a headset on, pointing at the hedge.

"She goes there," July said. "Behind the white rope, next to the second rose arch."

She pointed at the left side.

"Neighbors from Millbrook sit there. They brought their own ladders, and I don't ask why."

"Mom, you're okay with a cow at my wedding?"

"I put a cow in the binder on Sunday." She lowered her headset. "Page forty-one. Your father said I was joking."

"Were you?"

"I'm never joking about a binder."

At noon the garden filled.

Two hundred chairs stood in white rows under the arches.

The Parker side was full of men in tailored suits and women in hats.

The Millbrook side was thirty people in their best clothes, holding casseroles, because nobody had told them not to.

A man in suspenders had brought a ladder anyway.

Freddy stood at the front in a gray groomsman's suit, with the rings in his pocket and a very straight back.

He caught Jude's eye and mouthed, I'm not going to lose them.

Jude mouthed back, You'd better not.

Grandma Bronze walked Ken down the aisle.

Nobody had planned that either.

She took his arm at the end of the rows, with her white braid pinned up and her good purse over her elbow.

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