They Toasted the Happy Couple, So I Bought the Groom novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: Six Pages

I didn't give him an answer.

I took out my phone in his doorway, with his rain blowing in, and called Odessa.

"Draw me six releases," I said. "Clive's guarantees. All of them. I'll sign tonight."

"About time," Odessa said, and hung up.

My father watched me put the phone away.

He didn't say anything else, and I left him there.

The housekeeper lifted one hand as I passed the end of the drive.

My phone buzzed at the light on Falls Road.

Marigold. The first text she'd sent me since the luncheon.

"Take Mom's wine. All of it. I can't pay to keep the cellar cold."

The next afternoon Clive and I drove back up the valley in my Honda with the back seats folded down.

Marigold didn't come to the door.

The key was on its hook in the catering pantry, on its green ribbon, where it had always been.

Clive held the cellar door for me and followed me down the stone steps.

It was colder than in June. It smelled the same.

The bulb over the rack still buzzed.

My mother's bottles were on the bottom rack against the back wall, where nobody ever reached.

Six cases. Each one had a paper tag tied to the neck of the first bottle, in her slanted blue ink.

Iris's wedding. Marigold's wedding. Iris, thirty. Marigold, thirty. Gerald's sixtieth. Just because.

The case tagged for Marigold's wedding was the only empty one.

I untied the tag and folded it into my pocket.

Clive didn't say anything. He just started lifting cases.

He carried three up the stairs and out to the car, one at a time.

When he came back down, I was sitting on the old tasting table with a manila envelope on my knees.

He stopped at the bottom step.

Where he'd stopped in June, with his phone out like evidence.

"What's that?" he said.

"Come here."

He came.

I opened the envelope and took out six pages.

Six signature pages, one from each guarantee, his name on every one in blue ink.

On top of each, clipped, a release on Kestrel's letterhead.

Kestrel Holdings, LLC, releases Clive James Mercer from all obligations under this guarantee, fully and forever.

Each one signed by its managing member.

Odessa had countersigned every one in green, because she'd said she wanted to be in the picture.

I held them out to him.

He didn't take them.

"Iris."

"Take them. I'm done owning you."

"You never called them."

"I never let them go either." I put the pages in his hand and closed his fingers over them. "Now I have."

He looked down at the six pages in his fist.

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