I Left Him at the Altar, So the Best Man Took Me Off the Island novel · Chapter 1 of 40
Chapter 1: Page Two
Ten minutes before the wedding Gen overhears Constance and Bryce plan to take her father's land with a deed under the register, reads it aloud at the altar and walks out; the best man follows.
In the last ten minutes before my wedding, I heard my groom's mother explain how she planned to take my father's land with a pen.
I was alone in the anteroom of the island chapel, in a satin dress I had paid for myself.
The wall between me and the vestry was one layer of beadboard.
"Is the register out?" his mother asked. "Page two on top of the signing page?"
"Under it," my groom said. "The pen is right there. She'll sign wherever the pen is."
"The lawyer says the transfer holds if she signs after the vows, in front of witnesses," his mother said.
"Mom, she's going to sign it."
"The Point is the last piece," his mother said. "The resort can't be built around a shack."
My groom laughed, the easy laugh he used at dinners to get his way.
"She never reads anything she loves," he said.
I stood very still with my bouquet in both hands.
His mother said, "Be kind to her. Only until Tuesday."
Then they went out, and the vestry door closed, and the organ started.
I looked at myself in the mirror over the washstand.
My father had put the Ouellette Point in my name when I was nineteen, and he had made me promise to keep it.
It was seven-tenths of an acre, one rigging-loft cottage and a slip, and it was the last thing I had of him.
I had told Bryce that on our third date.
I walked to the chapel door and stood in it.
Two hundred people were turning in the pews, and the island light came through the windows in long gold bars.
Bryce stood at the front in his gray suit, beaming at me.
Beside him stood his half-brother, the best man, with his hands clasped in front of him.
Ansel Pettengill was tall, and sunburned, and he didn't smile.
I had met him four times, and he had never said more than a sentence to me.
I knew his name for another reason, though, and I had told no one.
Eleven years ago his signature had closed my father's boatyard, and I had seen the paper.
I walked down the aisle.
Nobody touched me, and nobody gave me away, because my father was dead and I had said I would go alone.
The minister smiled and started in on the dearly beloved.
I let him get as far as the vows.
Then I stepped past Bryce to the small table at the front, where the guest register lay open beside a fountain pen.
"Babe?" Bryce said.
I lifted the signing page.
Under it was a second sheet, thick cream paper with a heading in capital letters.
I read it out loud so the back pews could hear.
"Transfer of Real Property. Ouellette Point, Port Gannet, Maine. From Genevieve Ouellette to the Pettengill Family Trust. For the sum of one dollar."
A woman in the third row said, "Oh, my God."
"That's a formality," Bryce said, and he was still smiling. "Babe, it's for the marriage."
"Your mother said I'd sign wherever the pen was."
His smile slipped.
In the front pew, Constance had risen to her feet in her pearl-gray dress.
"Genevieve, dear," she said. "You're upset. Let's all have a drink and sort this out privately."
"I heard you through the wall," I said. "Both of you. 'She never reads anything she loves.'"
The chapel went so quiet I could hear the surf below the cliff.
Bryce looked at his mother, and everyone saw him do it.
I folded page two once and tucked it into the front of my dress.
"My father gave me that land," I said. "I'm keeping it. Enjoy the cake."
I turned and walked back up the aisle, the way I had come, with two hundred faces going past me.
I got as far as the chapel steps.
The wind off the water pulled my veil out sideways, and I let it go.
The ferry had left at one o'clock and would not return until five.
Now I stood on a small rock island in a satin dress, and the only way off was down the cliff path to the dock.
Footsteps came down the chapel steps behind me, quick and heavy.
I did not turn around.
"The ferry's gone," Ansel said.
"I know," I said.
"There's one boat at the dock."
"Yours."
"Yes," he said.
I looked at him then.
He had taken off his jacket, and his white shirt was open at the collar, and his gray-green eyes were steady.
"I heard it too," he said. "Through the wall. I was standing right there."
"And you came to the altar anyway."
"I came to see if you'd read page two," he said. "I didn't think you would. I'm glad I was wrong."
He did not offer me his arm.
He went down the cliff path ahead of me, one hand held behind him to show me the loose stones.
I followed because I had nowhere else to go.
The Marine Patrol boat sat at the end of the dock, white and low, with the state seal on the hull.
He jumped aboard and held out his hand.
I took it.
Behind us on the path came the sound of heels on rock, and a voice I would know in my sleep.
"Ansel."
Constance stood at the top of the dock with the whole wedding behind her, her pearls shining, and she wasn't pleading.
"If that boat leaves, so do you," she said. "Think very carefully."
Ansel looked up at his stepmother for a long moment.
Then he bent and threw the bow line off the cleat.
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