Chapter 23: The Party That Wasn't a Wedding

Justine's POV

The hall looked different with the white roses gone.

I had asked for long wooden tables instead of rows of chairs, and candles in jars, and no arch.

The banner over the door was a bedsheet my mother had painted in the Dayton garage.

It said THANK YOU FOR SHOWING UP.

Forty-one people came.

My agency friends came in a loud group with a sheet cake from the bakery under Clive's apartment.

The baker had written ON THE RIGHT ADDRESS in blue icing without being asked.

Maureen came alone, in her lavender coat, and stopped inside the doorway with her purse held in both hands.

"I wasn't sure you'd want me," she said.

"I asked you to come."

"I know. I still wasn't sure."

She held out a small flat box.

Inside was a pair of her own pearl earrings.

"They were my mother's," Maureen said. "I should have brought a wedding present to the real wedding, and I brought a grudge. This is late."

I put them in.

She cried a little, and I let her, and then I handed her a glass of wine.

My father's toast came first.

Nobody had known he would give one.

He stood at the head of the long table and cleared his throat, and forty-one people went quiet, because most of them had never heard him speak.

"My daughter went to a hall once to cancel a wedding," he said. "I walked her in."

"I'd like to say that I've never been prouder of anything I've stood next to."

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