Forgotten Groom in the Back Alley novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Clicker
Hazel's POV
On the morning of the gala I woke at four, with my heart already going.
I lay in the dark counting the things that could fail.
The projector could fail.
The caterers could be late, or the ice machine could break, or the chairman's wife could dislike the roses.
Yvette could keep her word.
That was the one that frightened me most, and I did not know why until I got up and put on the black blazer.
If she kept her word, nothing I had built would be needed.
I would have spent three weeks on a clicker and a cable.
I would still be the woman at the back of the room holding a clipboard.
I went downstairs in my socks.
Dot was at the stove already, in her cardigan, with the radio low and a pan of onions on.
"Sit," she said.
"I have the linens at six."
"Sit."
I sat.
She put a mug in front of me and stood behind my chair and began, without a word, to fix my hair.
She had done it for my first day at school.
She had done it on the morning of my own wedding, in this kitchen, with her hands shaking.
"You're afraid it will go wrong," she said.
"I'm afraid it won't be mine."
"The room?"
"Any of it. The day." I turned the mug in my hands. "I'm good at making other people's days. I've never been good at being in one."
Dot pinned the knot, firmly, and I felt her thumb rest at the back of my neck.
"A wedding doesn't have to go right," she said. "It has to have one person in the building who stays until the chairs are stacked. That person is who they remember."
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