An Anonymous Confession Game Ruined My Wedding novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Steps

Finbar tells the arriving guests the wedding is off; Brooke blames a mean game, Hattie confronts her, Brooke collapses, and Dalton arrives with a toddler who calls Brooke Mama.

I slept in my truck in the lodge parking lot.

At six in the morning Hattie knocked on the window with two coffees and her bridesmaid dress in a garment bag.

"I'm not wearing this," she said, and handed me a cup. "Tell me what you want to do."

"I want to tell them myself," I said.

"All eighty-two?"

"As they get here. Not through her mother, and not through a text."

Hattie looked at the lodge. The caterers were carrying chafing trays through the side door.

"Okay," she said. "I'll stand next to you."

By one o'clock the lot was full of cars.

The stone steps of the lodge were decorated with white flowers, and a sign in the grass said Brooke and Finbar in curly gold letters.

I stood at the bottom of the steps in my work jacket, not my tux.

My aunt came first. Then two guys from the road department and their wives, and my old college roommate, who had flown in from Phoenix.

I told each of them the same thing.

"The wedding is off. It's my decision. I'm sorry you drove up here."

My aunt cried. The roommate shook my hand and said nothing, which was the right thing to say.

By one-thirty about fifty people stood on the lawn, holding their gift bags.

That was when the lodge doors opened and Brooke came out in her wedding dress.

She had her veil pinned. Her makeup was perfect.

Her mother walked a step behind her, with a hand on her back.

"Everyone, please," Brooke said, and her voice shook just enough. "Everyone, I'm so sorry. There's been a terrible misunderstanding."

The lawn went quiet.

"Last night we played a game," she said. "A silly party game. Someone wrote something cruel on a card, and Finbar took it to heart."

I stared at her.

"Brooke," I said.

"I know you're hurt." She came down two steps and held out her hands to me. "But we can talk about this. We don't have to ruin it in front of everyone."

"You told me six years," I said.

A murmur went through the crowd.

"I said that because I was panicking," Brooke said. "You were shouting, and I was scared. I would have said anything."

"I wasn't shouting."

"You were," her mother said.

"I stood up and walked out."

"You were cold," her mother said. "That's worse."

"The card was true," I said. "You said it was true. Dalton didn't deny it."

"Dalton is a good man who is being slandered," Brooke said.

Someone in the crowd made a small shocked noise.

Hattie stepped up beside me.

"You said it in front of fourteen people," Hattie said. "I heard you. You said six years and you asked my brother to be nice to the man you did it with."

"Hattie, don't," Brooke said.

"Don't what? Say what you said?"

"You're not helping," her mother said. "This is a family matter."

"I'm family," Hattie said. "I was supposed to be your sister-in-law."

She started up the steps. Brooke's mother stepped in front of her.

"You sit down, young lady."

"Move."

"I will not."

"Move."

Brooke's mother put both hands on Hattie's shoulders and shoved.

Hattie went back a step and caught herself on the rail.

Then she shoved her back.

It wasn't a hard push, but Brooke's mother staggered into Brooke.

Brooke's heel caught the hem of her dress. She went down hard on the stone steps, one hand under her, her veil coming loose.

She didn't get up.

"Brooke," her mother screamed.

Somebody on the lawn shouted for a doctor.

My aunt was already dialing.

I knelt on the step beside Brooke. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't looking at me. Her breathing was fast and shallow.

"Brooke," I said. "Can you hear me?"

"My ankle," she whispered. "I can't feel my hand."

"Don't move," I said.

I had not decided to kneel there. I had just done it, because I had known her for six years and she was on the ground.

Her mother hit my arm. "Get away from her! You did this!"

"I'm trying to help her."

"You did this to her!"

The sirens came from the road a few minutes later.

Two paramedics took Brooke onto a stretcher. Her mother climbed in after her without looking at anyone.

Hattie stood on the grass with her hands over her mouth.

"Finbar," she said, "I didn't mean to push her."

"I know."

"I pushed her mother. I didn't push her."

"I know. I saw."

The crowd was whispering. A phone was raised, and then three more.

An engine sounded behind us.

A pickup truck came up the lodge drive too fast and stopped in the grass.

Dalton got out of the driver's side. He did not look at me.

He went to the back door and lifted out a little girl in a yellow raincoat, with a gray stuffed whale under her arm.

She looked at the ambulance, at the open doors and the stretcher.

"Mama," Poppy said, and reached for the stretcher.

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