My Groom Never Showed, So I Cursed Him for Eleven Months novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Hancock Street

Dahlia's POV

I took the 211 bus to my father's birthday in jeans and a clean white shirt.

It was the same bus, and the same driver, and he looked at my face and then at the floor.

Finnegan's was full by one o'clock.

Fifty regulars sat in the green neon light, with the Bruins on the television.

A banner over the bar said HAPPY 61ST BRENDAN in my cousin's handwriting.

My father saw me in the doorway and his big red face crumpled.

"Dahl," he said, and he hugged me so hard my ribs creaked.

He smelled of aftershave and fried onions.

For one second I was nine years old.

Then he let me go, and over his shoulder I saw Ambrose standing by the taps in a good navy suit.

He was holding a small velvet box.

I knew the box.

It had held my mother's engagement ring in the top drawer of my parents' dresser since the year she died.

"Papa," I said.

"Hear him out, Dahl."

The bar had gone quiet.

The Bruins played on, mute, over fifty heads.

Ambrose came across the room and went down on one knee on the sawdust floor.

"Dahl," he said. "I loved him too."

His voice cracked in the right place.

"I was his best friend for twenty years, and I let you down, and I can't forgive myself.

"Let me look after you. Your father's given his blessing. Marry me."

He opened the box.

It was my mother's ring, a thin gold band with a chip of sapphire.

He held it up to me in front of the whole bar.

Somebody at the back whispered, "Ah, Jesus."

A woman sniffed.

I looked at my father.

His eyes were wet, and he was nodding, and I understood he thought he was giving me a present.

I looked at Ambrose's dimple.

"No," I said.

It was out before I'd decided.

"I'm sorry?"

"No, Ambrose. Get up. That's my mother's ring, and you're not putting it on me."

The silence went on a moment longer.

Then my father's face changed.

"Dahlia Marie," my father said.

"I'm not marrying a man you picked, Papa."

"You will do as you're told."

His voice dropped and thickened.

"After the way you walked out of that church, you've got no right. You humiliated this family in front of everyone we know."

I stared at him.

"I humiliated you?"

"Dahl."

"I stood at that altar for forty minutes. I stood there.

"I took a bus home in a wedding dress, and you didn't call me once."

The room had stopped breathing.

"You didn't call," I said again, and my voice shook, so I said the rest very slowly. "You called Ambrose."

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