He Ditched Our Wedding, I Married His Wealthy Uncle novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Night Before

The producer sent a car for the footage on Friday morning.

She wanted all of it.

The lodge pool. The invoice. The Nairobi registry office. The barn camera at two fourteen. The last page of the bank file.

"You understand this goes out live," she said on the phone. "No delay. No edit. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong in front of four million people."

"It already went wrong in front of a hundred and eighty," I said. "I'll take four million."

The Rhinebeck sale closed at noon.

Ramsey signed on the hood of the blue pickup with a pen from the feed store.

He didn't read it twice.

He handed the pen back to me and went to split kindling.

That night the sheriff's wife sent up an apple pie, still warm, with a note that said "From the hat."

Clyde ate a third of it at the farmhouse kitchen table with his reading glasses on his nose.

"Walk me through it again," he said. "Slow. I'm old."

"I come down the terrace steps. The quartet plays. Dylan's at the arch."

"In his linen."

"In his linen. I walk past him."

"Past him," Clyde said, with deep satisfaction.

"There's a screen beside the arch for their Kenya montage. The producer plays ours instead."

"And then?"

"And then I don't know," I said. "Then it's live."

Clyde forked up more pie.

"Who's walking you down that aisle?"

"Nobody. I'm walking myself."

He looked at me over his glasses for a while.

Then he nodded once.

"I'll be in the third row," he said. "In a tie."

Ramsey looked up from the sink.

"You don't own a tie."

"I'll buy one. Duchess'll never know." He stood up, knee cracking, and put on his feed cap. "Good night, kid. Good night, hotel man."

He stopped in the door.

"Pie's mine. Don't touch the pie."

The screen door banged behind him.

Ramsey dried his hands and leaned on the counter, watching me.

The kitchen was quiet except for the woodstove ticking in the next room.

"You're not scared," he said.

"I'm terrified."

"You don't look it."

"I've stood at that arch twice now." I picked at the pie crust. "Both times I was the only one there who didn't know what was really going on. Tomorrow I'm the only one who does."

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