The Life I Chose novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Rehearsal
At her wedding rehearsal, Margo's fiancé carries his adopted sister to the ER and calls with orders; she says sure, changes the locks and walks into the rehearsal dinner to put him on the big screen.
At our wedding rehearsal, my fiancé's sister bent double in the second pew and gagged into her hands.
Holt dropped my arm halfway down the aisle.
He was beside her before the minister finished his sentence.
"Kendall? Kendall, look at me."
She shook her head and clutched her stomach under that huge cream sweater.
He scooped her up.
"Get the door!" he shouted at the groomsmen.
Then he ran down the aisle we'd just walked, carrying her, and out into the parking lot.
Nobody moved for a second.
The organist was still holding a chord.
"Is she all right?" the minister asked me.
"I don't know," I said. "She's been sick all week."
Ruthie came up behind me and squeezed my elbow.
"Food poisoning," she whispered. "Has to be. She ate the oysters at lunch."
I nodded.
I believed that.
We ran the rest of it without him.
One of the groomsmen stood in for the groom.
I practiced my vows to a twenty-four-year-old who kept apologizing.
Then we all drove to the hotel for the rehearsal dinner, because eighty people were already there and the lamb was already in the oven.
I was in the hotel parking garage when my phone rang.
Half an hour, almost exactly.
"How is she?" I said.
"She's pregnant."
I stopped with one heel out of the car.
"Nineteen weeks," Holt said.
I opened my mouth.
He didn't let me use it.
His voice went flat and calm, the voice he used on tenants who were behind on rent.
"The baby's mine."
A car alarm went off two levels down.
"She'd just been dumped that night, Margo. She came to me soaked from the rain and shivering. I only meant to comfort her, but then..."
He let the sentence hang there.
"My parents can't know yet. I'm bringing her home so I can take care of her. We'll tell them after the baby is born."
Home.
He meant my house.
"We'll postpone the wedding a year. You can explain it to the hotel, the minister and the guests."
My throat closed up.
I couldn't get a single word out of it.
"And quit your job," he added. "Kendall needs someone with her, and nothing can go wrong these next few months."
I sat there in my rehearsal dress with my keys in my lap.
His sister.
His parents adopted her out of foster care when she was seven and he was thirteen.
She grew up across the hall from him.
She calls his mother Mom.
At Christmas she sits next to him at the table, and his father says grace for "our two kids."
And he'd just told me to quit my job and nurse her through his baby.
I laughed.
It came out of me before I knew it was there.
"Sure," I said.
"Good," Holt said. "I knew you'd be reasonable."
He hung up.
He sounded pleased.
I looked at the clock on the dashboard.
Seven oh four, Friday, October tenth.
My thirtieth birthday.
Eight years ago I shook a man's hand on the Cliff Walk in Newport and promised him something stupid.
If I wasn't married by thirty, I'd give him one chance.
I'd laughed that night too.
I had been so sure.
I scrolled to a number I hadn't called since I signed the papers on my house.
"Fox Point Lock and Key."
"I need every lock on a house changed tonight," I said. "Front, back, the garage, the side gate. I'll pay double."
"Ma'am, it's Friday night."
"Triple."
There was a pause.
"What's the address?"
I gave it to him.
"Is the house in your name?"
"Only my name," I said.
I hung up and called Ruthie.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Where are you? Holt's mom is asking where you are. The DJ wants to start the slideshow."
"Tell him to wait," I said. "Tell him I need the screen."
"Margo, what happened?"
"Is the screen hooked up to a laptop?"
"Yeah, it's the hotel's. Why?"
"Can it take a video call?"
Ruthie went quiet.
She's known me since we were nineteen.
"What did he do?"
"Just get me the laptop," I said.
I walked into the ballroom at seven fifteen.
Eighty people turned around.
Holt's father was at the head table in his good navy blazer.
Holt's mother sat beside him in pearls, holding a glass of the Sancerre I had chosen for tonight.
Marjorie lifted it toward me and smiled.
"There she is. How's our girl? Did Holt call?"
"He called," I said.
The minister was at table three with his wife.
The wedding planner was hovering by the cake.
The hotel's events manager stood by the doors with a clipboard.
Everyone Holt wanted me to explain it to was right here.
How convenient.
Ruthie met me at the little podium by the dance floor and handed me the microphone.
The laptop was open.
The big screen behind me still showed our engagement photo, Holt kissing my temple on a beach in Watch Hill.
I tapped the microphone.
It thumped through the speakers.
"Sorry," I said. "Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming."
People smiled and settled.
Somebody at the back clinked a glass.
"Holt asked me to explain something to you tonight," I said. "To the hotel, the minister and the guests. Those were his words."
Marjorie's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"But I think he should tell you himself."
I clicked the video call button under his name.
It rang through the ballroom speakers.
Once.
Twice.
On the third ring the engagement photo vanished, and Holt's face filled the whole screen, ten feet tall.
Behind him, in a hospital bed, Kendall lay with a monitor strapped across her bare, round belly.
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