15 Days Before I Left Him novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Rehearsal

The rehearsal dinner was in the lodge's private dining room on Friday night, with a long table by the windows and the dark lake behind the glass.

I had been through the ceremony walk-through at five.

I'd carried an old bouquet of grocery-store roses down the lawn and stopped where the minister told me to stop.

Now I sat at the center of a table for twenty-two with my back to the water.

Roscoe sat on my left.

Faye was on his other side, because Judith had moved the place cards, and nobody had asked me.

Raylan sat across from me, and I had not looked at him once.

I could feel exactly where he was.

"Everyone, if I could have your attention," Judith said, rising with her glass.

The talk quieted.

"Tomorrow my son marries a wonderful woman." She smiled down the table at me. "And tonight I want to thank another one."

Faye ducked her head.

"Seventeen years ago, God gave me my son back, through the courage of one little girl." Judith's voice trembled beautifully. "She has been a daughter to me ever since. And now she's giving us the greatest gift of all."

A few people looked at Faye's stomach, then away, politely.

I realized most of the table knew.

Roscoe's college friends knew, and the minister's wife, and the cousins from Traverse City.

Nobody had told me, and every one of them had smiled when I came in.

"To Faye," Judith said. "And to our family. Which is getting bigger."

Glasses lifted all down the table.

I lifted mine, and I drank it, and I put it down.

Across from me, Raylan had not raised his.

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