Skipped by the Altar, Taken by His Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Ten-Forty
Off a red-eye in her wedding dress, Rhea is stood up at the City Hall window, finds her fiancé toasting his adopted sister's homecoming at brunch, drops her ring in his sister's mimosa and walks out, then learns he has sent their wedding announcement to her own column and plans to launch his run for mayor with his wife at his side.
At 10:40 the clerk at the City Hall marriage window called our names, and only one of us stood up.
"Pritchard and Eckert?"
"Pritchard's here," I said. "Eckert's parking."
She smiled at me over her reading glasses.
She'd sent me three wedding notices a month for six years. She knew exactly who I was.
"Take your time, hon. Nobody's behind you yet."
I sat back down on the wooden bench in my pale blue sundress.
I'd put it on in the airport bathroom at six that morning, after the red-eye from Phoenix.
Three weeks with my mother after her hip surgery. Three weeks of hospital coffee and my aunt's television.
I'd worn my mother's pearl earrings for the plane so I wouldn't lose them in a bag.
The marriage license was in my purse, folded once.
Blaine had texted me at 5 a.m. "Can't wait, Ree. 10:40. Don't be late."
At 10:43 my phone buzzed.
"Something came up. Monday? Love you."
I read it twice.
Then I called him, and it went to voicemail on the second ring, which meant he'd looked at my name and pressed the button.
I opened Instagram because I already knew.
Corrie Eckert had posted a story nine minutes earlier.
Blaine's adopted sister. Two years in Nashville, trying to be a singer.
It was the Landing, the restaurant on the river with the glass wall.
A bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. A cake that said WELCOME HOME in gold.
Blaine in a navy suit with no tie, his arm around her, raising a glass.
"My big brother skipped work for me!!" the caption said, with three hearts.
He hadn't skipped work.
He'd skipped me.
I turned the sound up.
"Two years," Blaine said in the video, "and this town finally sounds like music again."
I'd written that line.
Last fall, for his cousin's wedding toast. He'd read it off an index card and the whole tent had cried.
I'd written every word Blaine Eckert had said in public for four years.
The Rotary lunches. The Chamber dinners. The towing company's Christmas party.
He signed them B.E., and I let him, because we were going to be one name anyway.
A young couple came through the door with a baby in a car seat and stood behind me.
The bride's dress was white and too big in the shoulders.
I stood up and went to the window.
"Give them our slot," I said.
The clerk looked at my face and didn't ask.
The Landing was eight minutes away. I made it in six.
The hostess said, "Do you have a reservation?"
"My fiancé does," I said, and walked past her.
The whole Friday brunch crowd was there. Bankers, two council members, a woman from the Rotary whose speech I'd written in March.
Blaine saw me first.
His face did something quick and then it smiled.
"Ree! You're back early. Look who's home!"
Corrie turned around in her chair.
Platinum hair, cream silk, a pink mouth.
"Sweetie," she said. "You look so dressed up."
"It's my wedding day," I said. "It was at 10:40."
The table went quiet. The tables near it went quieter.
Blaine laughed and reached for my hand.
"Babe, Corrie's flight landed at nine. Two years. You understand. We'll go Monday."
I took the license out of my purse and laid it next to his plate, flat, so he could read his own name.
Then I twisted my ring off.
It stuck at the knuckle. It had always stuck at the knuckle.
I dropped it into Corrie's mimosa.
It went down slowly, through the orange, and sat on the bottom.
"Monday you can marry whoever you like," I said. "It won't be me."
"Ree." Blaine kept smiling for the room. "Don't do this here."
"You did it here. I'm just finishing it."
Somebody's fork hit a plate.
Corrie looked at the glass. Then she put two fingers in, fished the ring out, and licked the champagne off it.
"She's tired," Blaine told the table. "Red-eye. She gets like this."
I walked out through every eye in the restaurant.
Nobody stopped me, and he didn't follow.
I drove to his condo because that was where my clothes were.
I'd moved in last spring. My key still worked.
The bedroom door was open.
An open suitcase lay on his side of the bed, lace things spilling out of it.
A pink toothbrush stood in my cup by the sink.
I packed my clothes into two trash bags.
I took my mother's quilt off the back of his couch and my father's claw hammer from under the kitchen sink.
The hammer still had PRITCHARD HDWE burned into the handle.
I didn't think about my old laptop under his couch.
I didn't think about anything.
I drove to Connie's.
Connie Huff shoots photos for the Courier, and she's the only person I've ever cried in front of.
She opened the door, looked at the trash bags and the sundress, and said, "I'll kill him. Grilled cheese first."
I ate two.
I didn't cry. That surprised both of us.
At eight that night my editor called.
"Rhea. Why is there a wedding announcement in your queue for Sunday?"
I put the phone on speaker.
"I didn't file one."
"Blaine filed it. Through the website, to your column." Paper rustled. "'Blaine Eckert and Rhea Pritchard were married Friday at Halbrook City Hall.' There's a photo of you two at the river."
Connie put down her sandwich.
"There's more," my editor said. "He bought the front-page wrap for Sunday. He's announcing for mayor tomorrow night, at his grandfather Earl's eightieth birthday party."
"For mayor," I said.
"Against his own uncle, Reuben. And the press release says his wife will be standing beside him."
I looked down at my bare left hand.
There was a pale stripe where the ring had been for a year.
"Read me the quote," I said. "There's always a quote from the bride."
He read it.
"'Blaine is the steadiest man I've ever known. I'd marry him at any window in Ohio.'"
I'd written that too.
I'd written it for him to say about me.
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