The Anonymous Notes That Destroyed My Wedding novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Jar
The night before her wedding, Libby reads her bridal party's cruel anonymous notes aloud while her fiancé laughs, finds a secret warning at the bottom, throws them all off the farm, and knocks on cabin three, where a stranger holds a map of her orchard circled in red.
The night before my wedding, nobody in the bridal party could sleep, so Kelsey found an empty mason jar.
"Anonymous confessions," she announced. "Everybody writes one thing they've always wanted to say to the bride."
We were sitting around the fire pit behind my grandmother's barn.
Eleven of them, and me.
Shane had one arm around my waist and a beer in his other hand.
The cherry trees ran down the hill behind us, all the way to the bay.
Tomorrow two hundred people would sit under those trees and watch me marry him.
Kelsey passed out pens and the blank cards I'd cut for the guest book.
"No peeking," she said, and winked at me.
She had been my best friend since fourth grade.
She had done my hair for every dance, and she was doing it tomorrow.
The cards went into the jar folded in half.
Kelsey shook it and set it in my lap.
"Read them out loud, Lib. Every single one."
I closed my eyes, smiling, and pulled the first card.
I was expecting something sweet.
"I hope you trip on your train."
Everybody laughed.
I laughed too.
The second one said, "We all know the ring came from a pawn shop. You're the only one who doesn't."
Shane snorted into his beer. "It's a roast, babe. Keep going."
I looked down at my ring.
The stone caught the firelight.
He'd told me it was his great-grandmother's.
The third one said, "Nobody here actually likes you. We came for the open bar."
One of the groomsmen whistled.
A bridesmaid covered her mouth, and her shoulders shook.
The fourth one said, "Enjoy the farm while it's still yours. Signed, the down payment."
Nobody laughed at that one.
Shane's arm got heavier around my waist.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means somebody's drunk," Shane said. "Next."
The fifth one said, "She's prettier than you, and he's known it for a year."
Kelsey looked into the fire.
The sixth one said, "Smile big when your gran hands over the deed. It's the last thing you'll get out of this."
The seventh one said, "You smell like pie dough. He says it in bed."
The whole circle howled.
Shane laughed with them.
That was the one that did it.
Not the words.
Him, laughing.
Shane had eaten my pie every Sunday for three years.
He used to steal the crust scraps off the board before I could bake them.
Now he was wiping his eyes.
His little sister, Megan, was the only one not laughing.
She was staring at the jar in my lap.
There was one card left.
It was folded twice, smaller than the others, pressed flat against the glass.
I opened it with my thumb.
The letters were shaky and slanted backward.
"Don't let your gran sign the deed tomorrow. He already sold the farm. Ask the man in cabin three."
I read it twice.
I didn't read it out loud.
"Come on," Kelsey said. "What's the last one?"
I folded it and slid it into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
Then I picked the other seven cards up off the grass, one at a time.
"Libby," Shane said. "It's a game. Don't be like this."
"Like what?"
"Sensitive. It's the night before our wedding."
I stood up.
Gran's sign hung on the side of the barn, lit by the string lights we'd put up that afternoon.
TORRANCE CHERRY FARM. EST. 1961. BEV TORRANCE, PROP.
Bev Torrance had planted half those trees with her own hands.
Every person in this circle had eaten at her table.
"Who's staying in cabin three?" I asked.
Shane's beer stopped halfway to his mouth.
Just for a second.
"A client of mine. I comped him an invite. Why?"
"Give me your phone."
He laughed. "No."
"Then all of you can get off my grandmother's land."
The fire popped.
Nobody moved.
Kelsey laughed, high and thin. "Lib. You can't cancel a wedding at midnight. Two hundred people are coming."
"I didn't cancel the wedding," I said. "I canceled you. Get your keys. Go."
One of the groomsmen stood up and looked at Shane.
Shane didn't look at anybody.
He was looking at my pocket.
"You've had three glasses of wine," he said, in his patient voice. "Go to bed. I'll handle this."
"Don't follow me," I said.
I walked down the gravel path past the packing shed.
The cabins sat in a row along the edge of the orchard, where Gran used to house the pickers.
We'd painted them white for the wedding guests.
Cabin three had a light on.
Behind me I heard footsteps on the gravel, coming fast.
I knocked anyway.
The door opened on a tall man in a white undershirt and suit pants, his tie hanging loose around his neck.
He had a stack of papers in one hand and reading glasses pushed up into his dark hair.
On the top page was an aerial photo of our orchard.
Someone had drawn a red line around all of it, from the road down to the water.
Inside the line, in neat marker, it said, "Phase One: 140 rooms."
He looked at my sweatshirt, then my face, then my ring.
"You must be the bride," he said, and held out his hand. "Luke Prentiss. Shane said you were thrilled about the resort."
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