My Best Friend Took My Wedding, So I Fed the Whole Town novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Five O'Clock

Sunny and Lasse set the dock for a hundred and nobody comes, until the church bell rings and the Altar Guild walks down the hill.

By four o'clock on Saturday I had been called a thief a dozen times.

Not one of the callers had been brave enough to say it to my face.

The harbor office phone rang all afternoon, each caller with the same accusation.

"Is it true you kept the Lindholm money?" a woman asked at one o'clock.

She hung up before I could tell her the money was mine.

The caterer's van backed down the boat ramp at four, as promised.

Her crew unloaded forty trays of smoked lake trout, wild rice hotdish, roast potatoes and coleslaw.

Last off the van came a wedding cake with four tiers and my initials still on it.

I looked at the initials.

"Take them off," I said.

"Honey, it's a very good frosting," the caterer said.

"Then put a fish on it."

Lasse carried the first tray without a word.

He had brought the flatbed, the forty tables, and a long grill, and he lit it with a long match and a look of satisfaction.

"Some of the Altar Guild hold this against me," he said. "My trout. They say it's too smoky."

"Is it?"

"No," he said. "But I'm glad you asked."

We worked for an hour without talking.

My hand throbbed under the fresh dish towel he had wound on at noon.

Every time I lifted something heavy, he took the other end before I could ask.

At a quarter to five the tables were full of food and the dock was empty.

The harbor sat flat and silver in the late sun.

Gulls walked up and down the planks, inspecting the potatoes.

A truck came down Harbor Road, slowed beside the boat ramp, and turned around.

Another one drove by without slowing.

At five o'clock, the deputy's cruiser pulled up to the head of the pier.

He was Eirik's older brother, thirty-four, and he wore the county's tan uniform.

He didn't get out.

He sat behind the wheel with the window down and watched me.

"Nice party, Sunny," he called.

"Help yourself to a plate," I said.

"Mom says I'm not to."

He smiled, lifted two fingers off the wheel, and drove away.

I stood at the head of an eighty-place table, with my braid coming loose and a serving spoon in my fist.

I felt the eleven phone calls land in my chest at once.

Everyone in this town had known me since the day I was born.

I had counted on that.

"Maybe they're right to stay home," I said. "Maybe I should have eaten the whole thing quietly."

"Is that what you would have done?" Lasse asked.

"No."

"Then it's a good thing you didn't."

At twenty past five an old truck rattled down to the pier.

A man climbed out slowly.

He had sold my father nets for thirty years, and he had a bad hip and a cane.

"I heard there's trout," he said.

"There's trout."

"I heard you're a thief."

"I heard that too," I said.

He looked at the long, empty table, and then at me.

Then he sat down on the end of the nearest bench and unfolded a paper napkin.

"I've known your father since before you were born," he said. "He never once stole a nickel. I don't see how you would."

I brought him a plate of smoked trout and my hand shook slightly on the rim.

He ate with his coat on.

Nobody else came.

At half past five Lasse looked up the hill at the white steeple of the Lutheran church, and I looked with him.

I thought of my mother, who used to take me to that church by the hand on Sunday mornings.

I thought of her pew, three rows from the back on the left, where nobody sat anymore.

I thought of the twelve thousand dollars Eirik had asked me for in April, for the Fire Department's rescue boat.

I had moved it out of my wedding account that same afternoon without a second thought.

I was not going to cry in front of the nets man.

The bell began to ring.

It was not the five-thirty chime, short and thin.

It was the slow bell the church rang for funerals and the first day of harvest.

It struck one long stroke at a time, over the whole town.

The door of the church opened, and a line of women came out into the afternoon.

There were thirty of them at least, in cardigans and good shoes, and every one was carrying a covered dish.

At the head of the line walked the oldest member of the Altar Guild, ninety if she was a day.

She carried a hotdish in both hands, with her chin up.

They came down Hill Street in a column, past the lumber yard and the hardware store.

They did not slow when the deputy's cruiser came around the corner to stop them.

She reached the pier and looked down the whole length of the tables.

"Birgit Lindholm telephoned me four times about your dinner," she said.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," I said.

"I told her I have never missed a funeral lunch in sixty years."

She set her hotdish on the table.

"And I do not intend to miss a wedding that isn't happening."

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