Chapter 10: Sister-in-Law

"Nine," Rem said. "I'll bring the ring. You bring the bride."

"I'll see if she's free."

He was smiling when he drove away.

I went upstairs, peeled off the wet dress, and called my grandfather at eleven at night.

He picked up on the first ring. He always did.

"Hen. Are you dead?"

"I'm getting married tomorrow."

Silence.

"To Lance?" he said, in the voice of a man reaching for a shotgun.

"To Rem."

A longer silence.

Then a sound I'd never heard Walter Conway make in my life.

A giggle.

"Does he know?"

"No. And you can't tell him."

"Henrietta." He was still laughing. "I spent five years trying to get that boy to look at you. You did it in one night with a bottle of scotch."

"Grandpa. Promise."

"I promise." He blew his nose. "What time? I'll wear a hat."

City Hall was cold, bright and full of people getting parking tickets fixed.

I wore a white sweater and jeans and my mother's pearl studs, the only jewelry I owned that Lance had never touched.

Dina met me on the steps in sunglasses and a leather jacket with a bouquet of grocery-store tulips.

"I'm the witness," she said. "I've been a witness to so much this week."

"Did you sleep?"

"I wrote three thousand words about your restaurant and deleted all of them. Don't talk to me."

Rem was waiting in the hallway outside the judge's room.

Gray suit. White shirt. No tie. He'd shaved.

He saw me and stopped pacing.

"You came," he said.

"I said nine."

"People say a lot of things at night in the rain."

"Not me."

He took a small box out of his pocket and opened it.

Two plain gold bands.

"I didn't know what you'd like," he said. "So I got what lasts."

My throat closed up for no reason at all.

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