Replacing Four Grooms in One Day novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Groom Number Three

Vin bills Austin and arrives at Venue Three to find Desmond at the altar with his best friend in ivory lace, who has stage four, takes the top two tiers of the cake as a credit, and the drawbridge goes up at 1:41.

I dictated my answer to Austin at the next light, and Gran typed it with one finger.

Noted. The courtyard on Atlantic Street is four hundred and fifty dollars, nonrefundable, and I'm adding it to the two thousand. Invoice to follow.

I called the courtyard on speaker and told them to keep the chairs.

Gran watched me do it with her glasses on the end of her nose.

"Is that how you cancel a groom?" she said.

"That's how you cancel a groom," I said. "The next one is already warmed up."

Venue Three was a garden off Rutledge Avenue, with white chairs and an arch woven from magnolia leaves.

It was 12:02, and the ceremony was set for 12:30.

I parked in the loading zone and walked in with my train over my arm.

Desmond Faulk was already standing under the arch.

He was in a cream jacket, with the sunburn he has had every day since I met him, and he was holding the hands of a woman in ivory lace.

Seven people sat in the folding chairs. His mother was one of them, and six wore matching blue polo shirts that said Band Boosters.

Desmond saw me, and his whole face dropped.

"Vin," he said. "You're early."

"You're earlier," I said.

"I can explain. This is my best friend. We've known each other since we were five."

"She was diagnosed with stage four last Tuesday," he said, and his voice cracked. "She asked me for one wedding. I couldn't say no."

The woman in lace gave me a small, wet smile through her veil.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't want to hurt anyone."

"Of course you couldn't say no," I said to Desmond, because I am magnanimous. "Which clinic?"

"Fourth floor," he said.

The fourth floor of the main building at my hospital is the cafeteria and Accounts Payable.

I decided he meant a different hospital, because I had a ferry to catch.

"Congratulations," I said. "Your lace is beautiful. May I have a minute with the guests?"

The officiant shrugged. The woman in lace nodded.

I turned to the folding chairs.

"I am Desmond's Number Three," I said. "He signed a Standby Groom Agreement. I paid him a thousand dollars to hold today, and a groom who cancels owes me two thousand."

His mother put a hand over her mouth.

A woman in a blue polo, the Boosters' treasurer, held out her hand. "May I see page one?"

I gave her my spare copy.

She read it from top to bottom, front and back.

"It's very well drafted," she said.

"Thank you," I said. "I had a spare of it laminated."

Desmond covered his eyes. "Vin, please. Not in front of my mother."

"I'm not asking for the money today," I said. "That would be unkind."

I looked at the table behind the chairs.

On it stood a cake with four tiers and white roses, with a card in front that said Faulk and, below it, in my own handwriting, Hargrove.

I had ordered it on my own card, for six hundred and forty dollars.

"But the cake is mine," I said.

Nobody said anything.

"I'll take the top two tiers," I said. "I'll credit you the six hundred and forty. You now owe me thirteen hundred and sixty."

The treasurer closed the agreement and stood up.

"Ladies," she said to the other five. "Two to a side."

They carried the top two tiers out to my car on a cutting board, in a line, while the band director's mother held the door.

Desmond stood under the arch with the woman in lace, and neither of them looked at the cake.

I set the cutting board across the back seat, on top of my train and my life vest, and shut the door.

Gran looked at it through the window.

"A cake," she said.

"Venue Four will need one," I said. "It's a reception. There will be a reception."

"And if there's no groom?"

"There's a Number Four," I said. "He signed for the whole thing."

I took the laminated card from my clutch and crossed out line three with a marker.

The marker said V.H. SPARE on the side.

We pulled out of the loading zone at 12:51.

I had built in forty minutes of cushion, because a buyer who plans to the minute is a buyer who loses a shipment.

We drove down the peninsula with the cake sliding gently on its board.

Gran ate a sugar rose off the edge of it, with her eyes on the road.

"That's evidence," I said.

"It's a rose," she said.

At 1:41, four minutes from the pier, the lights on the drawbridge began to flash.

The gates came down, and the bridge deck rose slowly into the air, with a tugboat coming toward it down the channel.

On the card in my lap, the last line read: 2:00. Lacroix Harbor Ferry.

The ferry sailed at two, with or without me.

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