Chapter 15: Not the Bride

Zelda's POV

I drove into Connecticut with David's hand resting on my knee and three men squeezed into the back of the truck.

We reached the Ellison estate at ten to four.

There was a white tent on the lawn and a hundred and fifty gold chairs on each side of a long grass aisle.

A string quartet was playing near the roses.

Valets in black vests were parking Mercedes in a field.

"Nobody gave us a program," Bernard said from the back seat. "I'd like a name tag."

"Bernard," I said.

"I'm just saying I'll behave."

I parked the truck across the front of the drive, so no one could leave without moving it.

Then I got out in jeans, boots and my mother's yellow cardigan, and the valets stopped what they were doing.

My engagement ring was in the pocket, against my hip.

David came around the hood.

He had put on a clean flannel, and he looked tired and enormous and completely sure.

"Where do you want us?" he said.

"Behind me."

"All four?"

"All four. Not touching anyone."

Ellis smiled a little.

"I can do that," he said.

Garson took out his phone and slid it into his breast pocket, with the recorder running.

I started to walk.

I walked up the gravel past the valets and the guest book and a table of silver-framed photographs of me and Clarence.

The quartet saw me first.

The cellist missed a note, then the violinist, and then the music stopped.

Three hundred heads turned.

I walked up the grass aisle between the gold chairs, with four men behind me.

A woman in a lavender hat covered her mouth.

A man near the front said, quite loudly, "Is that the bride?"

Clarence stood under the flower arbor in a charcoal suit, with the best man at his side.

His mother sat in the first row, in navy, with her pearls and her hands folded on a leather folder.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Taken in My Sleep by My Stepfather David and His Friends from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.