The Lake House Had One Bed Left for Our Parents' Wedding Week, So I Shared It With My Soon-to-Be Stepbrother novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Toast

Marlene tapped her wineglass with a butter knife, and sixty people stopped chewing.

She stood at the far end of the head table in a pale blue linen suit, the blue folder tucked under her left arm.

The string bulbs lit her helmet of hair gold.

I sat at the other end of the table in a green dress with a navy scarf on my wrist, between Judy and Jack.

Judy had a cake knife beside her bread plate.

Nobody had asked why.

"I won't take long," said Marlene. "I'm a sister, and I get to be sentimental."

A warm murmur went around the tent.

"To my sister Judy, who has been alone eight years, and who deserves every happiness. And to Jim, who is a good man."

My father wiped his eye with a napkin.

"And to honesty," said Marlene, and her smile reached the front of her face, "because I believe a family is only as strong as the truth it can bear."

Under the table, Jack's knee pressed once against mine.

"I've kept quiet since Tuesday," Marlene went on. "I wanted Judy to have her week. But I can't sit by while two people at this table, two people who should be brother and sister by tomorrow afternoon."

I stood up.

The bench scraped.

Jack stood with me, a half second behind, buttoning his jacket.

"Aunt Marlene," I said, "I'll save you the trouble."

Marlene's mouth stayed open on the next word.

"Jack and I are sleeping together."

The tent went so quiet that I heard the dog, outside, scratch.

"Since Monday night," said Jack, in his teacher's voice, pleasant and clear. "The first time was under a quilt. The second was Tuesday at dawn in the boathouse, which you watched from the second-floor window."

"I did not."

"The curtain moved, Aunt Marlene."

Somewhere in the middle of the tent, a cousin whispered, "Ten dollars," and her husband whispered, "I'm not giving you ten dollars."

"We're twenty-nine and thirty-one," I said. "We met in April for ten minutes. We share no blood, no adoption, no childhood, and no house until four o'clock tomorrow. And we wanted to say it ourselves, before you did, because you were going to say it like a crime."

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