Chapter 22: Her Name First

"Yes," Signe said, on the pier in the cold, before he had finished the question.

The lighthouse wedding was nine days later, and it was small.

There were no reporters and no tent.

There was a salt wind, a white tower on a gray ledge, and thirty folding chairs on the grass.

Signe's aunt sat in the front row in a blue dress and a yellow slicker, because she did not trust the sky.

Julie sat beside her, and had already cried twice into a napkin.

The captain stood at the front in dress blues, since Dane had asked him, and the captain had said yes at once.

Signe came up the gravel path in a plain ivory dress with her hair pinned back and the brass dividers pinned to her bouquet.

Nobody gave her away.

She walked alone, and she wanted to.

Dane waited at the foot of the lighthouse steps in his uniform, with his hands clasped hard in front of him.

He watched her the whole way.

When she reached him, he did not speak.

He took her hand and kissed the back of it, and the chairs rustled.

"Dearly beloved," the captain began, and then stopped.

"Sorry. I wrote something. I've decided to skip it. Dane, you'll go first."

Dane unfolded a sheet of paper.

His hand shook, and he put it away again.

"I wrote vows," he said. "I'm not going to read them. I'd have to hold the paper, and I want to look at you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Substitute Wife Is Not on the Return Manifest from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.