That Makes Two of Us novel · Chapter 5 of 24
Chapter 5: The Stand-In
The volunteer lived in a yellow house with a porch swing and a beagle that hated Colton on sight.
"Down, Pickles," the old man said.
He was eighty-one, thin as a rake, with thick white hair and a hearing aid.
He looked at us for a long moment and then at the license copy in my hand.
"Well," he said. "I wondered if one of you would come."
He took us inside and made us sit at a kitchen table covered in oilcloth.
"Which one are you?" he asked Colton.
"The groom."
"You weren't there, son."
"I know."
"I was," the old man said. "I wore the suit."
He told it plainly.
Two dying men, two old friends, both in the same hospice that week.
A grandson in Singapore who couldn't come.
A granddaughter in a funeral dress who didn't know what she was signing.
"I stood in for you," he said to Colton. "The lawyer asked me, on account of I was your size, more or less."
"Which lawyer?" I asked.
"Grey suit. Very polished. He said it was a blessing for the old men."
"He lied."
"He lied beautifully," the old man said. "I didn't know until I saw him file it the next morning."
Colton's hands were flat on the oilcloth.
"And the bride?"
"Sweet girl," the volunteer said. "Hair to her waist under that veil. She cried through the whole thing and she meant it. She thought it was a game for her grandfather."
My eyes burned.
I looked at the beagle.
"She never knew," Colton said slowly.
"Not a word. Nobody told her."
"Nobody told me either."
"Then the lawyer did you both a wrong," said the old man. "A bad one."
Colton stood up so suddenly that the chair scraped.
"Who does that to a girl?" he said, to nobody. "She's in a veil with a dying man in a wheelchair, and somebody puts a clipboard in her hand."
His voice shook.
I had never heard a man defend me before without knowing it was me.
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