Wash Her Feet novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Basin on the Stool

Forty guests, a basin and Shelby waiting at the gate: Hallie ends the party, throws Lance out, and wakes to find the video of her blamed and a man on her porch.

I walked home from the courthouse in my wedding dress, all two miles of it.

By the time I reached the house on Alder Street, my feet ached through my flats.

I took off the veil and left it on the stairs.

Then I carried every shirt, shoe and protein shake Lance owned out to the front porch in black trash bags.

It took eleven bags.

At five o'clock a van full of folding chairs pulled up, and behind it came Lance's car with Shelby in the passenger seat.

I stood in the open doorway with my arms crossed.

"Hal, honey, the caterers are already paid," Shelby called from the sidewalk.

She stopped at the iron gate, exactly where she always stopped.

Her hand rested on the latch, and she did not lift it.

"Come out here and we'll talk about it like grown women," she said.

"There's nothing to talk about," I said. "The wedding's off."

"Then we'll call it a party," Lance said, hauling a case of lanterns past me. "People are coming, Hal. Forty people."

He walked around the side of the house to my backyard as if it were his.

I should have shut the door in his face.

Instead I followed him, because I wanted to see how far he would go.

He went all the way.

By six o'clock there were lanterns strung across my father's oak tree and a long table of food under it.

On a wooden stool in the middle of the lawn sat a new white basin tied with a satin ribbon.

A pitcher of warm water stood next to it.

Shelby had bought the ribbon.

I knew because the receipt was still sticking out of the bag on the grass.

Forty guests drifted in through the side gate, in dresses and good shirts, holding wine glasses and phones.

Lance's whole sales team came. So did half my clinic and two of my neighbors.

Shelby took a spot just outside the gate on the sidewalk and greeted each person with a hug across the fence.

She did not step onto the grass, not once.

At seven Lance tapped a fork against a glass.

"Folks, a little game before dinner," he said, and everyone turned to look at me. "Our bride lost this morning, and in this family, the loser pays."

A few people laughed.

"Wash her feet, Hal," somebody near the table called out. "It's tradition."

"Do it, do it," a coworker of Lance's chanted, grinning, and three more people took it up.

My face went hot in front of my whole yard.

For a year I had walked into this exact moment with a smile, and tonight my feet did not move toward the stool.

I looked at Shelby over the fence.

She gave me a small, gentle nod that said go on, it's nothing.

That nod was the same nod Lance watched for.

I had seen it a hundred times, and tonight for the first time I understood what it was.

I walked to the stool and picked up the basin.

The chanting got louder.

I carried it to the middle of the lawn, tipped it over, and poured the whole thing out onto the grass.

Warm water ran into the roots of my father's oak tree.

The chanting stopped.

"The wedding is off," I said. "The party is over. Everybody out of my yard."

"Hal," Lance said, laughing too hard. "Come on. It's a joke."

"You have eleven black bags on my front porch," I said. "Take them and go."

"I live here."

"You lived here. This is my father's house and my name is the only one on the deed."

Nobody said anything.

Forty people stood in the lamplight holding their wine, and half of them were filming.

Lance looked at the gate.

Shelby had her hand pressed to her chest and her eyes full of tears, and she kept them on me.

"Lance, let her be," she said gently. "She's not herself."

He deflated at once.

He took the bags off the porch without another word, and the whole party left behind him, quietly, glancing back at me.

At the gate Shelby caught my wrist across the iron bars.

"I'll take him home and make sure he's okay," she whispered. "Call me tomorrow, sweetheart. I'm worried about you."

She kissed my cheek over the fence.

Her eyes went over my shoulder, to the house, for one second, and then straight back to me.

I did not know why I noticed that.

I stood alone on the lawn until the last lantern burned down.

At midnight my phone lit up on the kitchen counter.

Shelby had posted a video.

It was the courthouse steps, filmed from the side, with my voice on it.

"I lose. I lose every time. I'm finished."

It cut right before Lance thawed.

It cut before the ring, before the forfeit, before the part where they shoved me off a platform.

It showed a woman in a wedding dress shouting at two people who stood still and silent.

Under it Shelby had written: My best friend had a breakdown on her wedding day. Please be kind. She's very unwell and we love her.

It had two million views already.

The comments were a wall of hearts for Shelby and a river of other things for me.

Under it, a text from my boss at the clinic.

Don't come in Monday. The owner's seen the video. We'll talk.

I sat down on my own kitchen floor in a ruined white dress.

At dawn, with no sleep, I heard a truck idle outside.

I went to the front window.

A man was sitting on my porch steps with his hard hat beside him and two paper cups of coffee, and he had not knocked.

It was Rafe Kessel.

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