My Groom Fled the Wedding, So His Father and His Guides Kept Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Note
The groom has flown off before dawn, and Kit takes his note from his father's hand, reads it aloud to forty guests, stays when the plane leaves, and tells Hank to start on her buttons.
Hank Dunnigan stood under the stuffed salmon with a folded note in his hand, and he could not make himself read it.
Forty people sat on the lodge's folding chairs and watched his mouth.
I stood at the back of the aisle in my wedding dress, holding my bouquet.
The groom's place at the front was empty.
"Devon flew out before light," Hank said. "He left this for the room."
He held the note out to me instead.
His hand was huge, and the paper shook in it.
I walked up the aisle while the harmonica player lowered his harmonica.
I took the note out of Hank's fingers, and my knuckles brushed his palm.
It was hot and rough.
"Kristin," he said, to the floor. "You don't have to."
"Yes, I do."
I opened the note and turned to face the chairs.
My father sat in the front row in a rented suit that was too tight across his shoulders.
He had worked fishing boats for thirty years so that I could stand in this dress.
"Dad," I read, in Devon's slanted handwriting. "Read this to everyone. I can't do it."
My voice did not break.
"Kit is a great girl, but she is too much for one man, and I am only one."
Somebody gasped, and a woman in a green hat covered her mouth.
"Tell her not to come after me. I'm sorry. G."
I read the last line twice, so that the back rows could hear it.
Someone near the aisle said, "Oh, honey."
I folded the note along its crease and pushed it down into my bouquet, between the white roses.
"I cooked every bite of the dinner myself," I said. "Salmon, two kinds of potatoes, the pies. It's on the long table."
Nobody moved.
"Nobody leaves hungry," I said. "Eat."
They ate.
It was the worst meal in the history of the lodge.
Forty people chewed in silence while the groom's chair sat empty.
I served them myself, in my dress, with the train pinned up over one arm.
Beck Moseley took the pitcher out of my hand and poured the water himself.
He was the head guide, forty, with a dark crew cut and reading glasses on a cord.
Rolf Kvamme, the pilot, who had talked through every dinner of the last four summers, set down a tray and did not make one joke.
Jesse Seitz carried the pies out of the kitchen with flour still on his forearms.
His eyes were wet, and he looked angry about it.
Hank did not eat.
He stood at the window with his back to the room.
For four years Hank had never looked at me.
He spoke to my shoulder, or the stove, or the lake behind my head.
I had always taken it for dislike.
At three, my father put his big hand on my braid.
"Come home with me, Kitten," he said, and his voice was thick. "The Beaver has a seat."
"No, Dad."
"Kit."
"I'm staying," I said. "I'll call you from here. Go home and eat something."
He looked at me for a long time, and then he kissed my forehead.
I watched him walk down to the dock with the others.
The charter Beaver took off at four with thirty-nine wedding guests in it, and it banked once over the lake and was gone.
The big room was very quiet afterward.
Hank came in from the dock with his shoulders hunched against the cold.
He stopped in the doorway, with the three guides behind me and the long table stacked with dirty plates.
"That was the last charter of the season," he said, to the table. "There was one empty seat. You could have had it."
"I know."
"After today nothing lands on this lake until the ice is thick enough for skis."
"When is that?" I asked.
"The first week of December."
"Then I'll stay and cook."
The room went still.
Beck took his glasses off, and Rolf's mouth opened and closed.
Jesse set his dish towel down on the counter very carefully.
The four of them looked at each other, one at a time.
I reached up and pulled the pins out of my hair.
The veil came off in my hand, and I laid it across the back of a chair.
Nobody told me not to.
Hank was at the window again, with his back to me and his hands flat on the sill.
His hair was gray at the neck, and his shoulders strained the seams of his suit coat.
"Your son is a coward," I said, "and you are the only man in this room who hasn't looked at me in four years."
His hands curled on the sill.
"Kristin," he said.
"Turn around, Hank."
It took him a long time.
When he turned, his pale gray eyes went over my face, my bare shoulders and my hands, and then back up to my eyes.
It was the first time in four years that he had looked at me.
I crossed the floor until I was close enough to smell woodsmoke on him.
I turned my back to him and lifted my braid off my neck.
Forty small pearl buttons ran down my spine to my waist.
"Devon was supposed to do these tonight," I said. "Start at the top."
Behind me, Hank drew one long breath, and his thumb found the first button.
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