You Lost Us In The Test novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Sesame-Free
"Yes," I said. "Obviously yes. Stop crying on my daughter."
"I'm not crying on her. I'm crying near her."
June grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled, and he let her.
We got married on the first Saturday in July, in the hall behind Gran's church in Deptford.
Gran had booked it in March, the morning after the cold room, before anyone had told her anything.
"I knew from the crossword," she said.
The hall had a scuffed wooden floor and a piano with three dead keys and a hatch through to a kitchen that smelled of forty years of tea.
The team had decorated it overnight.
There was white bunting off the beams. Jam jars of sweet peas down every table.
The twins had laminated a sign for the door.
"THIS IS A NO-CAMERA EVENT. EXCEPT GRAN. GRAN DOES WHAT SHE LIKES."
I got dressed in Gran's spare room with my best friend from Pittsburgh doing my hair.
She'd flown in on Thursday and cried twice already.
"It's a good dress," she said. "It's a very good dress. Don't let me look at you."
It was plain and white and had pockets.
In the left pocket I had six crackers in a napkin. Habit.
My mother knocked on the door at a quarter to two.
She'd flown in on Wednesday and stayed at a hotel by the station, the way I'd said.
She'd asked to come. I'd said she could sit in the back row.
She didn't come in. She held out a small box through the gap.
"Your grandmother's earrings," she said. "Pearls. You can say no."
I looked at them a long time.
"Thank you," I said, and put them on.
She went to sit in the back row.
Brody was waiting at the hall door in a suit that actually fit.
He'd moved to London in April. He worked for a small company that made dishwashers for food trucks, and his gaskets didn't leak anymore.
"You ready?" he said.
"Are you?"
"No. I've been sick twice."
"That's my line."
He held out his arm.
The night tech played the piano, avoiding the three dead keys.
Everybody stood up.
The twins in matching purple glasses. The woman from Croydon and her son. The barista from the corner café with her baby in a sling.
Gran in the front row in a hat the size of a bicycle wheel, holding June.
June was ten months old in a tiny white dress with a yellow cardigan over it. The one with one sleeve longer than the other. It fit now.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of You Lost Us In The Test are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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