I Don't Need Your Blue Roses Anymore novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Ninety Guests

I walked into the upstairs room at seven with blue on my hands and my mother's bracelet on my wrist.

Ninety people turned around.

The whole room had been done in blue.

Delphinium stood in tall glass jars along every table, and hydrangeas hung in the windows.

Larkspur and cornflowers were piled along the bar.

Nobody had put out a single pink thing.

I heard a woman near the door say, "Oh, it's beautiful."

Mallory stood by the cake table in a black dress with her hair down.

She looked at the flowers, and for one second her face was bare.

Then she smiled and tapped her glass with a fork.

"Everyone, thank you for coming," she said. "I have a few words for Anneliese's birthday."

My father was already in the front row.

He had ignored his own text and come, and his jaw was set.

Dean sat three seats down from him, in a rumpled suit, staring at his hands.

Frances stood near the back wall in her good cardigan.

Beside her, with an empty vase in his arms and a clean shirt on, was Nate.

He saw me and nodded once.

"First, a confession," Mallory said into the microphone.

She held up a thick envelope.

"In the past four months I moved a hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars out of Anneliese's savings," she said. "I didn't ask her. This envelope holds every receipt, and a check for the eight thousand four hundred I haven't spent."

A murmur went through the room.

"The rest went half to the wedding and half to my mother's care home. Mr. Wardell can ask them for it."

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