He Said Apologize, I Said the Wedding Is Off novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Read It Out

I stood up, and my chair scraped the floor in the quiet.

Marcy still held her glass in the air.

"Thank you for the toast," I said. "I'd like to answer it."

"This isn't the time," Marcy said gently. "Greta, honey, sit down."

"You said that to me on Thursday, too."

A man at the next table shifted in his seat.

I had a folded statement in my coat, and I took it out and held it where the room could see it.

"This is the card Rupert and I opened for wedding emergencies only," I said. "Most of the money behind it is mine."

"Since September, eleven thousand dollars has gone out of it."

"Two restaurant tabs at the Duluth steakhouse. A hotel in Bayfield. The winter camp for a seven-year-old boy."

"I never touched that card," Marcy said, with a small laugh.

"It's on your phone, Marcy. Rupert gave you the number."

"Because I'm a widow, and I'm alone, and he's a kind man."

"He's a frightened man."

Somebody at the back coughed.

I turned to the room.

"Tonight's fund has raised a hundred and eighty thousand dollars," I said. "On Sunday night, in my living room, Marcy told Rupert she needed a hundred and eighty thousand dollars by today."

"That is a lie," Marcy said.

"Then show us where the fund's money is."

"It's in a trust."

"Whose name is on it?"

The room had gone so quiet that I could hear the ice in someone's water glass.

Marcy set her glass down on the lectern.

She smiled at the hall, a trembling, wet smile.

"I don't have to answer to you," she said. "I'm the one who lost him."

"Then open the chat," I said.

"What?"

"The messages you showed everybody on Thursday. The ones from me. Put your phone on that screen and open the whole thread, from the first line."

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