He Sent a Proxy Groom, So I Walked Away Forever novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Guest List

I wore dark green to the Harvest Gala, with my hair down over my right shoulder.

Gwendolyn had told me to wear white.

I wanted every person in that room to see what I had decided not to be.

Cal parked the shop owner's van behind the caterers' trucks and came around to open my door.

He wore a charcoal jacket borrowed from the shop owner, two inches short in the sleeves.

His shirt was white, his beard was trimmed, and he looked up at the floodlit front of Courtland Hall without blinking.

"You can still say no," I told him.

"I know."

"You'll be standing in front of two hundred people who think you took money."

"I mailed it back," said Cal. "I can stand in front of anybody."

He held out his arm, and I took it.

He had put himself on my left without thinking.

I noticed it, and my chest went tight in a way that had nothing to do with the gala.

My phone buzzed in my clutch.

It was Hallie, from the coat check, where a friend on the hospice staff had gotten her a volunteer apron.

"I'm in," she wrote. "The slideshow guy is the night nurse who held your mom's hand. He says give him the link and he'll put it wherever you tell him."

I typed back: "After I speak. Wait for my nod."

"And the camera guy?"

"Side door, with his memory cards. He texted at noon."

"Be brave," Hallie wrote. "Or be loud. Either works."

Inside, the hall smelled of cider and candle wax.

There were pumpkins on every table and white lights wound through the beams.

Two hundred people stood in the great room in their good coats, and every head turned when we came through the doors.

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