The Imperfect Marriage novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Gala

The Stenbeck Marine autumn gala took place inside the empty dry dock.

Strings of work lights hung over a banner that said NINETY YEARS ON THE HARBOR.

Three hundred people came.

They sat at long tables on the concrete floor beside the ship's great hull.

They drank from paper cups and ate from silver trays that a catering truck kept refilling.

Pru did my hair.

My father watched from a folding chair at table one.

His new pump hung at his hip in a little black bag, and his grin didn't stop.

"Don't cry on the dress," Pru said. "It's silk."

"I'm not crying."

"You've got a very wet face."

The dress was the color of the lake at dusk, a dark blue column that left my shoulders bare.

Ross stood at the bottom of the dry dock stairs in a black suit and no tie.

He looked up at me and forgot, visibly, how to do anything else.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi."

"You look nice."

"You look like a ship's launching."

"Is that good?"

"It's the best thing I know."

He offered his arm and I took it.

We walked down into three hundred faces, and I felt each of them read the headline on me.

Some were curious.

Some were soft.

A few, near the back, were hard.

The executor was at the head table in a plum-colored suit.

Lowell's father sat three chairs from her.

And Lowell, in a tuxedo, stood at the end of the bar with his arm around Faith.

Faith would not look at me.

At nine, the executor stood and tapped her glass.

"Friends of Stenbeck Marine, we have a little business before the dancing."

Lowell stepped forward before she'd finished.

"Judge, if I may. A matter of integrity."

He held a folded newspaper over his head.

"This crew has trusted this yard for ninety years.

"It deserves to know its owner bought a bride in a fourteen-day sham marriage, to cheat his grandmother's will."

The murmur ran down the tables.

Lowell turned to me with a face full of grief.

"I'm sorry, Dag. I'm sorry, but they deserve the truth. You're not a wife. You're a prop."

I felt Ross's arm go rigid.

I squeezed it.

"Let me," I said.

I walked out into the open space in front of the head table, in my blue dress, on bare concrete.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Imperfect Marriage from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.