I Blessed Her Wedding With My Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Door That Closes

Dot stitches Jo's hand in Anson's lake house, Jo sets her terms, and the video of the wedding is everywhere.

Anson's lake house sat at the end of a gravel road, behind an iron gate that closed on its own.

Dot didn't let me look at it.

She sat me at the kitchen table under a lamp, opened her handbag, and laid out a curved needle and a roll of black thread.

"You carry that to weddings?" I said.

"I carry it everywhere. People are idiots with knives."

She peeled the soaked napkin off my left palm and made a sound through her teeth.

"Fourteen stitches, maybe fifteen. Anson, hold the lamp."

He moved the lamp closer, and then he did something I hadn't asked for.

He slid his hand under mine, palm up, so my wrist rested on his fingers and my hand stayed still.

His thumb stayed on the side of my hand, well away from the scars.

His skin was warm and dry.

Nobody had touched me in three years except to check on me.

"Look at the wall," Dot said. "Count the tiles."

I counted forty-one tiles by the time the needle stopped pulling.

Dot knotted the last stitch and bit the thread.

"There. You'll have a line across it, but your hand will work."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Eat something."

"First I need the bathroom," I said.

Anson pointed down a short hall.

I went in and shut the door behind me.

The latch clicked.

I stood there with my good hand flat against the wood.

Nobody pushed the door open.

Nobody asked if I was all right.

No one was counting the minutes I spent in the dark.

I slid down the door to the floor and cried without making a sound, until my stitches throbbed with my pulse.

Then I washed my face, opened the door by myself, and walked back into the light.

Dot had put a sandwich on the table.

Anson was standing against the counter with his arms folded and his jaw tight.

"I have three rules for staying here," I said.

"Okay."

"You don't know what they are yet."

"They're yours. I'll keep them."

I held up one finger.

"Every door in this house closes, and nobody watches me. Not through the crack, not at night, not for my safety."

"Done."

A second finger.

"Nobody decides what I eat, what I take or what I sign. If someone hands me a pill, I want to know what it is."

"Done."

A third.

"You don't touch me unless I say so."

Anson didn't move.

"Even the hand?" he said quietly.

"The hand was an emergency."

"All three," he said. "Understood."

"There's a fourth," Dot said, with her mouth full. "Eat the sandwich."

I laughed.

It was a rusty, short sound, and it surprised all three of us.

I had finished half of the sandwich when the gate buzzer rang.

Anson looked at his phone, and his face changed.

"It's your mother. She's got the deputy with her."

"Tell them to go away," Dot said.

"A wellness check," Anson said. "If I don't open the door, he'll say I'm hiding you."

My stomach turned to ice.

Then I thought of the clerk who had typed the word no three times.

"I'll go," I said.

I walked to the front door with my bandaged hand held against my chest.

On the porch, in the yellow light, stood my mother in her cream cardigan, with the deputy a step behind her.

She had changed out of her wedding dress.

Her eyes were wet, and her makeup was perfect.

"Baby," she said. "Thank God. Come home. Tilda needed five stitches, and she's not pressing charges if you come home and take your medicine."

"Ma'am," the deputy said. He looked tired and not at all sure of himself. "Are you thinking about harming yourself or anyone else tonight?"

"No," I said.

"Do you feel safe here?"

"I feel safer here than I have in three years."

He waited for me to say more.

I looked at him steadily, until he looked down at his notebook.

"I don't have grounds to take her," he said to Mom.

"Josephine," Mom said gently. "Please."

"I'm tired, and I have fourteen stitches," I said. "Goodnight, Mom."

I began to close the door.

She leaned in through the gap, and her voice dropped to something only I could hear.

"Your pills run out on Friday," she said. "Let's see how well you sleep."

Then she stepped back and smiled for the deputy, and I shut the door in her face.

My knees nearly gave out.

Anson caught my elbow, and I stood very still.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm not touching you."

He let go.

Dot was standing in the kitchen doorway with her phone in her hand and her face gone gray.

"Jo," she said. "Come look at this."

It was the ballroom, filmed from the back row.

The video had started with my mother's hand on my wrist and the knife in my fist.

It stopped at the moment I lunged, and skipped the part where I put it down.

The caption read, KNIFE SCARE AT PRESCOTT WEDDING: BRIDE'S SISTER ATTACKS.

Three million views.

Outside, headlights swung across the kitchen wall.

A white van with a satellite dish on the roof was turning into the gravel drive.

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