They Toasted the Happy Couple, So I Bought the Groom novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: The Widow's Garden

I read my father's email twice standing at the sink with soap on my hands.

Then I dried them, and I called the foreman.

He picked up on the first ring. Behind him a television was going and a dog was barking.

"You saw it," he said.

"I saw it. What are the crews saying?"

"That your dad's never once sent us an email." He paused. "And that you're the girl who sat on my desk and ate my pretzels."

"Tell them I'm not selling anybody's job. Tell them I'll say it to their faces."

"When?"

"Soon. Before he does."

I hung up.

Clive was already on his knees in the spare room, digging through the banker's box from his old office.

He came out with a thin manila folder and laid it on the yellow table.

Four pages. Bank confirmations, printed May 30, the morning the money went out.

On the last one, in the memo line, someone had typed: swans, pair, weekend rate.

"I printed them the day it happened," he said. "I told myself it was for the file."

"It was for you."

"It was so I'd have proof I noticed." He pushed the folder toward me. "Take it to the widow."

"Berenice will call these privileged. She'll report you to the bar."

"Probably."

"You could lose your license, Clive."

"I've lost the job and the car." He shrugged. "It's a paper license. Let them come get it."

The widow lived in Roland Park, in a grey shingle house behind a wall of roses.

She met us in the garden on Saturday morning in a straw hat.

She had pruning shears in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other.

"Mr. Mercer," she said. "You're a brave man to come up my path."

"Or a broke one, ma'am."

"Those are often the same thing." She pointed her shears at a wrought-iron table under a pear tree. "Sit. Show me."

I put one page in front of her.

Just one. The first wire, to the wedding planner, with the company's account number at the top and the date.

The widow put on her glasses.

She read it, line by line, her lips pressed thin.

She didn't ask for the other three.

"Your mother," she said, "used to bring me cuttings from Briarwood. That yellow one by the gate is hers."

I looked at the rose by the gate.

I hadn't known that.

"She'd have shot him," the widow said, and took off her glasses. "Well. She'd have had a very calm word."

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