Oops, Wrong Bride? Fine. No Wedding. novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Annulled

I nudged Hayes awake with my bare foot and held the phone over his face.

He read the headline with one eye open.

"Huh," he said. "My little brother found his spine."

"In the newspaper."

"It's a start. He usually keeps it in my mother's purse."

A text came in from Trey while I was still holding it.

"Church next Sunday. 10 a.m. Please come. You don't have to say a word."

Next Sunday, the old stone church on Meeting Street was full.

It was the same church. The same pews. Half the same faces.

I hadn't been inside it since I walked out with my suitcase.

I sat in the back with Hayes on one side and Emmy on the other.

Emmy had put on a dress for the first time in six years, and kept tugging at it.

My father sat in the deacons' row up front, in his navy suit.

Mrs. Mattox sat in the Mattox pew on the groom's side.

Shelby sat beside her in white eyelet, phone face down in her lap.

At the end, before the last hymn, Trey stood up.

"Reverend. Can I have a minute?"

The officiant looked surprised. Then he stepped aside from the pulpit.

Trey didn't go up to it. He stood in the center aisle, right where it had happened, with his hands at his sides.

"Six weeks ago I stood at that altar," he said. "Some of y'all were here."

Nobody moved.

"Liza Gatling stood up there and smiled at me." His voice wobbled. He kept going. "And when her best friend pulled her veil off, I said 'oops.' Like I'd stepped on somebody's foot."

Somebody in the middle pews shifted.

"I've heard that word every night since. Mostly I hear the laughing under it."

He turned around and found me in the back row.

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