Chapter 14: The Rehearsal Dinner

By six o'clock the long table stood in the yard under the barn lights, set for thirty-four.

I straightened the chairs twice, just to keep my hands still.

Neighbors came up the drive in clean boots and pressed shirts, carrying casseroles and calling Kat mija.

The county clerk arrived last, a small gray woman in a blazer with a leather folder under her arm.

Ray met her at the gate and walked her to the seat on his right.

He was cheerful, and he never once looked at me.

I had found exactly one thing in Grandpa's banker's box, and it was not enough.

Four years of line items marked management fees, each one larger than the last, and not one invoice behind any of them.

I had the page folded in my back pocket, and it felt like nothing.

Abuela sat at the head of the table in her wheelchair, with her shawl over her knees and her face giving away nothing.

Kat sat on her right in a green dress, holding Ryan's hand so hard her knuckles showed.

I sat across from them with my fork in my fist.

We ate for twenty minutes.

Somebody's husband told a long story about a calving in a blizzard, and thirty people laughed in the right places.

Then Ray stood and tapped his glass with a spoon.

"Friends," he said. "Family."

The yard went quiet.

"My niece is about to marry, and I could not be prouder."

He smiled around the table.

"So tonight I want us all to know exactly who we're welcoming into this family."

Ryan's hand went still in Kat's.

"Sam Garland," Ray said warmly. "A hard worker. A good man with the cattle."

He paused.

"A man who showed up one winter with nothing and a story nobody ever heard."

He turned his glass in his fingers.

"Except I've heard it now. Sam's name is not Sam."

A fork clinked against a plate somewhere.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I'm Still In Love With the Groom from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.