Chapter 23: The Wedding That Wasn't

The wedding was set for four o'clock on Saturday at the club in Edina, and I walked in at three.

The ballroom doors stood open.

Two florists were taking white roses out of tall vases and putting them into cardboard boxes.

A string quartet's empty chairs stood in a row, facing nobody.

The banner that had said Welcome Baby was gone, and a man on a ladder was taking down the arch.

Savannah sat alone in the front row.

She wore the wedding dress, ivory, with long sleeves and a veil pinned to her bob, and she had let the waist out.

Her hands lay in her lap, and her face was bare of everything.

I carried a paper bag in my right hand.

"Cor," she said, without turning around. "Have you come to look?"

"I've come to bring you something."

I walked down the aisle between the chairs and sat in the row in front of her, half turned, so that I could see her face.

Her father had not come, and her mother was in Florida.

Warner had left a message on Thursday saying he was working, and he had not rung again.

Nobody had told her to cancel the hall, and nobody had told her not to.

"The florist won't give me the deposit back," she said. "I sat down because my feet hurt."

I took the blue mug out of the bag and set it on the chair beside her.

She stared at it.

"You left that in the sewing room," I said. "Bernadette washed it."

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