My Groom Walked Out, So His Brother Took His Place novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Forty Buttons
On the ninth of May, a year to the day, I put the dress back on.
My mother let the seams out a half inch at the waist, because I'd stopped skipping lunch.
She sewed the forty satin buttons back on herself, one at a time, with the dress across her knees, and did not say a word about it until the last.
"I never thought I'd see this again," she said, biting the thread.
"Neither did I."
"I wasn't sure I wanted to," she said.
"And now?"
She looked up at me over her glasses.
"Now I know what it was for," Lorene said.
At eleven-thirty the sky was blue and the heat was already rising off the street.
The church on Main Street stood in the sun with its great oak doors propped open and its stone steps warm to the touch.
I walked up them in my grandmother's veil and my father's watch.
Nobody was inside.
There was no tent, no cameras, no bunting.
The pastor stood in the doorway, with his hands folded.
Oma sat on a folding chair at the top of the steps in a purple hat, with her cane across her lap.
My mother stood beside her.
And on the lowest step, in a dark suit, with the sun on his brown hair, stood my husband.
He held a small box in his hand.
I stopped in front of him.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi."
"You look nervous."
"I've done this once before," Jude said. "Under bad conditions."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of My Groom Walked Out, So His Brother Took His Place are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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