The Anonymous Notes That Destroyed My Wedding novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Kelsey

Luke let go of my hand.

"I'll be at the cabin," he said quietly.

"Stay."

He looked at me.

Then he stayed, a few steps back, by the chalkboard.

Kelsey stood under the stand light in jeans and a plain gray sweatshirt.

She had an envelope in both hands.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's late. Your grandmother told me I could wait."

"Gran did?"

"She brought me a coffee. She didn't say anything. She just put it down and left."

That sounded like Gran.

"I took a plea on Thursday," Kelsey said. "For the cooler. Probation and two hundred hours, and I pay you back."

She held out the envelope.

"The electrician's bill. The cable. The ice for two bathtubs. I asked the church what the fish-fry cooler cost to run that night." Her mouth twitched. "They wouldn't tell me, so I guessed."

I took it.

"I'm moving to Lansing," she said. "There's a chain salon in a mall. Nobody there has seen the video."

"Somebody has."

"Somebody always has." She almost laughed. "Libby. I'm sorry. For the jar. For pie dough. For the photo, and the cooler, and the yearbook. For laughing. I'm sorry for all of it. I don't have a better way to say it."

I looked at her for a long time.

Twenty years.

Every dance. Every haircut.

My lunches in fourth grade, from her mother's kitchen.

"I accept your apology," I said.

Her whole face opened.

"Can we..."

"No."

It came out gentle.

I meant it to.

"I'm not taking you back, Kels. I'm not your friend anymore. I don't hate you, either. I just don't have room for you."

She nodded.

She'd known.

She nodded a few more times, looking at the gravel.

"Can I buy a pie?" she said. "For my mom."

I went behind the counter and got one out of the case.

Tart cherry, lattice top.

"Twenty-two dollars."

She paid it, full price, in exact change.

She drove away down the hill and didn't look back once.

Luke came and stood next to me.

He didn't say anything.

He just put his arm around me, and I leaned on him.

That fall he picked apples with the brothers and pruned our trees with Gran.

He opened the cold storage barn on the main road in October with two trucks and seven farms.

In November, Shane pleaded guilty to forgery.

The prosecutor mailed a copy of his little two-line note to a second-grade teacher in Grand Rapids.

The first snow came in December.

I walked out to the road block with a thermos of coffee, and Luke was up a ladder in Grandpa's boots and a wool hat, cutting water sprouts while Gran pointed at them from below with her cane.

He climbed down.

I handed him the coffee.

"Yes," I said.

He looked at me.

"Yes, what?"

"Nothing," I said. "A question I asked myself in September. I finally answered it."

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