Chapter 20: Rehearsal

The van was in the server's mother's name by nine the next morning.

Declan paid for it from his own account, in cash, to a dealer who asked no questions.

At ten the server texted a single word:

"Saturday."

That left the rehearsal.

Stanley's family held it on Thursday night in the Kirkbride Grand's ballroom, with the minister, the florist and a string quartet.

I came with the cake plans under my arm and a face I'd practiced in the mirror.

Tabitha stood at the altar arch in cream, practicing how to look at Hayden.

She was very good.

Hayden stood beside her with his hands clasped, saying words after a minister I had never met.

"I take thee."

He did not say them to her.

He said them to the floor, and every time he looked up he found me against the back wall, and looked down again.

Stanley was in the front row.

He smiled at me once, pleasantly.

I smiled back.

The screens that would play the slideshow hung down both sides of the ballroom, enormous and dark.

A technician in a black shirt fed cables into a console near the bar.

I watched the cables, and then I turned away before anyone saw me looking.

When it was over I carried my plans down to the pastry kitchen, because I needed ten minutes without Kirkbrides.

Declan was waiting there.

He had come through the loading dock with Romy's cousin's delivery crew, in a borrowed apron.

"You look ridiculous," I said.

"Thank you." He shut the door with his heel. "I'd like to know if I'm a stranger in my own building."

"You are."

"Then show me the oven."

I showed him.

Six steel ovens, cold and clean, in a white room that smelled of nothing.

He stood in the middle of it and looked at me.

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