They Toasted the Happy Couple, So I Bought the Groom novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Top Me Up
At her sister's wedding to the man who jilted her, Iris pours champagne through a toast that gives Marigold the house and makes Iris her powerless adviser, then declares a default on her father's company from the service table, and the groom reads her name mid-dance.
My sister married my fiancé on a Saturday, and I poured the champagne.
"Iris, you're so good with details," Marigold had said in March, holding my hands in both of hers. "Will you be in charge of the bubbly? The caterer's short."
The caterer was short because she'd cut two waiters to pay for the swans.
So at six o'clock, in a sage silk maid-of-honor dress, I walked the white tent with a bottle wrapped in a napkin.
Three hundred guests. Thirty tables. Briarwood's lawn going gold behind them all the way down to the pond.
The swans were on the pond. They had been rented for the weekend.
"Just a splash, dear," said a woman from my father's club.
I gave her a splash.
"You're holding up beautifully," she added, and patted my wrist.
Every table said a version of that.
You're so brave. You're so gracious. I could never.
I filled their glasses and said thank you.
At the head table, Clive Mercer sat beside my sister in the navy suit I had helped him pick for our own wedding.
He'd worn it to the tasting. I had fixed his collar in the car.
He did not look at me when I filled his glass.
Marigold did.
"Not too much for him," she said. "He gets handsy."
The table laughed.
My father stood and tapped his flute with a fork.
The tent went quiet for Gerald Cromwell.
"Thirty-eight years ago I started a trucking company with one truck and a loan I couldn't afford," he said.
Laughter. He waited for it.
"Today I'm giving away the best thing I ever built."
He meant Marigold.
"Marigold, you always knew exactly what you wanted." He raised his glass to Clive. "And Clive, you finally figured it out."
The laugh was bigger this time.
I set the empty bottle in the ice and opened another.
"A father should give his daughter a home," my father went on. "So as of tonight, the big house is yours. I'll take the carriage house and stay out of your way."
Applause. Marigold pressed her hands to her mouth.
"And Clive, welcome to the board of Cromwell Group. Family should have a seat at the table."
More applause.
The commodore from the yacht club whistled.
"One more," my father said, and turned to find me.
People turned with him.
I was standing behind table nine with a bottle of champagne.
"Iris is coming home," he said. "Monday morning she starts at the company as Marigold's financial adviser."
A few people clapped, unsure.
"No vote, of course." He smiled at me. "She's never needed one. She just needs to be useful."
That one got the biggest laugh of the night.
I smiled back at him.
I had practiced it in the mirror for a year.
Then Marigold stood up in her lace, glowing, and lifted her glass toward me.
"I have to thank my big sister," she said. "Iris introduced us."
Murmurs. A few people looked at their plates.
"And she let go so gracefully. Honestly, Iris, thank you for not making this weird."
The tent laughed, because she was laughing.
Clive looked at the tablecloth.
Marigold held her flute out across the head table, at arm's length, toward me.
"Top me up?"
I walked over.
Three hundred people watched me walk over.
I filled my sister's glass to the line, and not a drop past it.
"Perfect," she said. "You're perfect."
"I know," I said.
I went back to the service table behind the tent flap, where the ice tubs were and nobody looked.
My phone was under a stack of linen napkins.
I opened the email I had written in May and saved in drafts.
NOTICE OF EVENT OF DEFAULT. Note One. Cromwell Group.
The June payment on Note One was nineteen days late as of yesterday.
On the twentieth day, the holder of the note could declare a default.
Today was the twentieth day.
The notes said every notice went to the borrower's counsel.
The borrower's counsel was the groom.
I had read that clause forty times.
At the bottom of the notice was a signature line.
Kestrel Holdings, LLC. By its managing member.
I typed my own name under it.
Iris Cromwell.
Then I pressed send, set my phone back under the napkins, and picked up a fresh bottle.
The quartet started the first dance.
Marigold had chosen the song our mother used to sing in the car.
Clive led her onto the floor under the string lights.
He was a good dancer. I'd taught him.
Halfway through, his breast pocket lit up blue through the navy wool.
Marigold frowned at it.
He laughed something to her and slid the phone out, meaning to silence it.
He read the screen over her bare shoulder.
He stopped dancing.
Marigold kept swaying for a beat, alone in his arms.
Then Clive lifted his head and looked across three hundred guests, straight at me.
I raised my bottle to him.
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