The Bride He Replaced novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Last Row Is Empty

The marriage license cost sixty dollars and took four pages.

Duncan slid them across the clerk's counter in May, and then he sat back and folded his hands.

"Read every one," he said.

"I intend to."

"Out loud, if you like."

I read all four pages to the end, with the pen in my hand and Jonah asleep in the sling against my chest.

The clerk with a pen behind each ear watched me do it and nodded.

"There's nothing on page four," I said.

"I'd hope not," said Duncan.

"I checked anyway."

"I'd have been disappointed if you hadn't."

I signed it with my own name in blue ink.

The decree had come through in March, and the lake hotel had a new board in April.

They hired Duncan to fix it, and the first thing he fixed was the chapel roof.

On the last Saturday of the month, I stood in the vestibule of that same chapel in the dress.

It was the cream silk with the pearl buttons, and it had been to the cleaner, the seamstress, and the back of a hotel closet.

Bea had taken it in, pinning the waist on her kitchen table with the pencil behind her ear, while Jonah slept in the laundry basket.

"It was never cut for her," she said, around the pins. "It was cut for you. Somebody just read the wrong tape measure."

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