I Was Never One of Them novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Mock Wedding
Whitney wears Hazel's mother's veil to marry Hazel's fiance as a party game, Hazel ends it in front of everyone, and the caretaker who stops for her in the storm knows her last name.
On the last night of the lodge trip, Whitney Crane handed me a blanket and pulled my fiancé's chair closer to the fire.
A dozen people were watching, and four of them were filming.
"It's only cards, Haz," Whitney said. "You're not going to be weird about it, are you?"
Gavin laughed, and Whitney rested her hand flat on his chest. "Ignore her. She sulks every time she doesn't get picked."
He meant me.
I had been polite for four days.
I had washed the dishes that nobody asked me to wash, because everyone else had known each other since prep school.
On the first night Whitney had given me her own sweater when I shivered.
She had saved me a seat at every dinner.
She had driven us all up the mountain herself, with Gavin in the back seat the whole way, the way she always drove him.
When I mentioned my mother's dialysis on the second night, Whitney squeezed my hand.
"Don't worry about the bills," she said. "The Lockridges look after their own."
I had thought, she's trying.
Before we left the city, Gavin had kissed my forehead and said, "Whit is like my sister. You'll see."
The card game was their tradition.
Every October the group dealt out a deck and let it decide who got dared, who got paired, who paid for dinner.
Tonight's deck had wedding cards.
One half of a pair showed a white gown, the other a black suit, and whoever held the matching halves had to marry.
I drew a card with a bouquet on it.
It matched nobody.
Gavin held up a gown. Whitney held up the suit.
Their cards matched, and the whole circle howled.
"Fate," Whitney said, and kissed his cheek.
"Haz, you're on camera duty," said one of the husbands, and put a phone in my hand.
Someone dragged a coffee table in front of the fire for an altar.
Someone else started humming the wedding march.
Whitney turned to me with her hands pressed together. "Please, please, please. Let me borrow the veil."
My mother's veil lay in its box on the sofa.
I had shown it to all of them at dinner on the first night.
My grandmother had sewn the lace by hand, and my mother had worn it, and in six weeks I was going to wear it down the aisle to Gavin.
"No," I said.
The circle went quiet for a moment.
Gavin crossed the room and took my elbow.
"Haz. It's a laugh. Don't make me look bad in front of everyone."
He said it softly, so it sounded like a favor.
I opened the box.
Whitney lifted the lace out like it was hers and pinned it into her hair.
The veil hung down her back, the same lace my mother had cried under.
Gavin took his place at the coffee table.
The husband who played officiant held up a ladle for a microphone.
"Do you, Gavin Lockridge, take this woman?"
"I do," Gavin said, and he did not look at me once.
"Do you, Whitney Crane?"
"Obviously," Whitney said.
"You may kiss the bride."
Gavin kissed her.
It was not a cheek and it was not short.
His hand slid down her back, and Whitney laughed into his mouth, and the room cheered.
I stood there holding the phone, and the red light was on, and I was filming it.
Someone had put me in charge of the record.
When they finally broke apart, Whitney looked straight at me, still smiling.
"You're not seriously jealous, are you? It's just a game."
Gavin wiped his mouth with his thumb and shrugged.
"Don't mind her. She's always been a sore loser."
I turned off the camera.
I walked to the coffee table and put the phone down beside the ladle.
Then I reached up and pulled the veil out of Whitney's hair.
The comb took a few strands with it, and she yelped.
I folded the lace over my arm.
I slid the ring off my finger, held it over her champagne glass, and let it drop.
It sank with a small, clean plink.
"Congratulations," I said. "You can keep both."
Gavin stood up so fast the table rocked.
"Hazel. Sit down. You're making a scene."
"You made it. I'm leaving."
"You're what?"
"I said I'm leaving."
Whitney laughed, but it came out thin.
"Where would you even go? It's a mountain road and it's pouring."
"Anywhere that isn't here."
One of the wives pulled out her phone to film me.
I let her.
Gavin followed me into the hall, and his voice dropped.
"If you walk out that door, don't expect me to come after you."
"I don't."
"My mother will hear about this tonight."
"Good. Tell Constance all of it."
He grabbed for my arm, and I stepped back.
Behind him the circle had gone quiet, and Whitney leaned in the doorway with her arms folded and my mother's lace still caught in her hair.
"Honestly," she said, "you were never really one of us anyway."
"I know," I said.
I took my coat from the hook and walked out into the storm.
The rain hit like thrown gravel, and the road ran black and shining downhill in the dark.
I had walked a quarter of a mile with the veil wrapped against my chest when headlights came up behind me.
A pickup slowed and stopped, and the passenger window rolled down.
The man behind the wheel wore a rain jacket and had a scar through his left eyebrow.
I had seen him twice that week, mowing, fixing the dock, carrying wood.
No one in the circle had ever said his name.
"Pass is closing in twenty minutes," he said. "Get in, Hazel Kendrick."
Everyone at that lodge called me Haz, and nobody had ever said my last name out loud.
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