Dumped at the Courthouse, Married by Noon novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Pretzel's Vote

We read it in Liesl's kitchen the next morning, over eggs.

Pretzel lay under the table with his chin on Emmett's shoe.

Liesl sat across from us in a quilted robe, with her hair not yet combed, which I had never seen.

She looked ten years older and strangely at ease.

"I haven't read it either," she said. "Otto wrote it the year he died. He told me it was for the boy, and that I wasn't to look."

"You've never looked?"

"I kept my promises to him. That's the sort of woman I am. I just keep them badly when I think I know better."

Emmett broke the seal with his thumb.

The paper was thin and yellow, written in a blocky, upright hand.

He read it aloud.

"To my grandson, who is reading this on the day he is thirty-five."

He swallowed and went on.

"I made a rule that you must be married before you take the brewery.

I ran it alone for forty years, and it hollowed me.

I loved your grandmother, and I was never home.

I want you to have a person who tells you no.

Do not marry for a debt.

Do not marry for a merger.

If I know your grandmother, she will try to arrange something.

Let her.

She is usually right about people and always wrong about timing.

Marry someone who will stand in the door of your office and tell you the truth when you are being a fool.

That is the whole recipe.

The beer is easy.

Your grandfather, Otto."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Liesl's eyes were wet.

Mine were too.

"He knew you," I said to her.

"He always did." She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. "He's laughing at me right now, wherever he is. He's saying, 'Ten years, Liesl, and it took a vet tech.'"

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