Chapter 24: Lockridge Point

My mother had written on a single sheet of blue stationery, in the upright hand I had thought I'd forgotten.

My darling Ainsley,

If your father is giving you this, then you are getting married.

I am so sorry I am not there to fuss over your hair.

I won't tell you who to marry.

I am a poor judge, since I picked your father.

He is the worst businessman I know and the best man.

Marry someone who will tell you the truth, even when it comes late and costs him.

Marry someone who is kind to the people who cannot do anything for him.

And plant something.

A house with no roses has nobody waiting in it.

All my love, always,

Mom

I read it twice.

Then I folded it into the bodice of my mother's dress, over my heart, and went down the stairs to my father.

He gave me his arm without a word.

The ceremony was at five, at the edge of the lawn, with the harbor behind us gone copper in the last of the sun.

A hundred and ten chairs stood on the frozen grass in neat rows.

A hundred and ten people sat in them in their winter coats.

There was the club manager, and the oldest director with his cane.

There were the caterer and his forty kitchen staff in their good clothes, and the orchestra leader with his violin case on his knee.

The old man in the white blazer sat in the front row, holding his grandson's arm.

Not one of them was whispering.

My father walked me down the grass between the chairs.

At the water's edge stood a retired judge in a long black coat, with Lawrence beside him.

He wore a plain dark suit and no tie.

He looked at me coming toward him, and his face did what I had once seen it do on a cold porch step.

It opened.

This time he did not put it away.

Teddy stood at his side as best man in a borrowed morning coat, holding a small silver tray.

Keep reading free with an account. Start We Never Said We Went Bankrupt! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.