They Voted to Replace Me at My Own Wedding novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Snowed In

A blizzard shuts the road and Marcello puts June in his own suite over his mother's objection. Through the wall she hears Gwen's father say she leaves by morning or the truce is dead.

"You can't leave tonight," Marcello said again.

"Watch me."

I looked past his shoulder at the black SUVs lined up on the drive, with snow already burying their hoods.

One of his men jogged across the lawn with a phone held to his ear.

He stopped at the foot of the steps and said something I couldn't hear.

Marcello listened without turning around.

"The county closed the pass at three," he said.

"An avalanche gate dropped across the only road down."

He looked at the snow.

"Nothing moves until the plows come."

"When?"

"The twenty-seventh, if the snow stops."

Three days.

I stood outside a chapel that had just voted me out, in a wedding dress.

I had a drive in my fist and nowhere else to go.

"Then I'll sleep in my car," I said.

"You came by shuttle van. It left an hour ago."

"The staff wing, then."

"No."

That was his mother's voice, behind us.

She stood in the doorway with her black silk shawl pulled tight, and she did not look at me.

"The girl took off a ring in front of a hundred guests, Marcello."

Her eyes stayed on him.

"Gwen's father is under this roof. She can sleep with the maids."

"She sleeps in my suite."

"You put a woman who just humiliated this family in your own bed?"

"I put a woman I proposed to in my own rooms," Marcello said. "I'll take the couch."

His mother's mouth went flat.

She turned and walked back inside, and her heels left wet marks on the marble.

Marcello opened the door for me.

His suite took up the whole top floor of the east wing.

It had a fireplace as tall as my shoulders and an old pine bed with a quilt on it.

The window showed nothing but white.

A maid had already left my overnight bag on the bench. She had gone before I could look at her.

I set the bouquet on the dresser, face down.

I kept my hand curled over the ribbon until the door closed behind her.

"You'll want those out," Marcello said.

"Out of what?"

"Your hair."

I put my hand up.

The veil was held by twelve pins.

Roxanne had pushed in each one that morning with her careful, shaking fingers.

My eyes stung, and I looked at the fire instead.

"I can do it."

"You'll tear your scalp. You can't see them."

"I can feel them."

He waited.

I sat on the edge of the bench with my back to him.

It was easier than watching his face.

His hands were very careful.

He took the first pin out with two fingers.

Then the second.

His knuckles brushed the skin behind my ear, and I stopped breathing without deciding to.

His hand wasn't quite steady, and he said, "They're small," as though I had asked.

It was a hairpin. I told myself that his hand shook because of the pin.

Eleven. Twelve.

He laid them in a row on the dresser, silver on dark wood.

The veil slid off my shoulder.

"Thank you," I said.

I didn't turn around.

I wanted to say the other thing, the one under my tongue.

I had wanted his hands in my hair for fourteen months, and I hated that I still did.

I didn't say it.

"You have the drive," he said quietly.

"Yes."

"I won't ask you for it."

"Good."

"Will you tell me where you got it?"

"No."

"All right."

That was all. He didn't push, and he didn't argue.

He took a blanket and a pillow from the closet and made up the couch by the fire, with his back to me.

I changed in the bathroom into an old gray sweatshirt from my bag.

I locked the door, and then I felt stupid for locking it.

When I came out, he was sitting on the couch in shirtsleeves with a tumbler of water he hadn't touched.

"There's a guard outside the door," he said. "For tonight. Not to keep you in."

"To keep Gwen's father out?"

He didn't answer, and that was an answer.

I climbed into his bed in his quilt, and it smelled of cedar and cold air.

I turned my back to the fire and held the drive against my chest through the sweatshirt.

Around midnight I woke to voices.

They came through the wall beside the headboard.

The study was on the other side, and the old pine boards were thin.

A man's voice I didn't know, smooth and older.

"Your bride made a scene, Bellandi."

A chair creaked.

"My daughter stood in front of a hundred people and was left there like a coat on a hook."

"You sent her in."

"I sent her to a wedding that had already been voted on, by your bride's own friends. Don't make me say it twice."

Marcello said something low, too quiet to hear.

"She leaves in the morning," the old voice said. "Or the truce is dead."

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