After He Gave My Wedding Away, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Aisle
On Saturday, at four in the afternoon, Hattie stood at the door of the shop with a wicker basket and collected every phone.
"No livestream," she told the guests, one by one. "Not a photo, not a story, not a single post. You can have them back at the cake."
Linnea put hers in without a word.
The baker put hers in and kissed the basket.
The potter put hers in, wearing her yellow coat, and for the first time she was smiling.
The chairs were the plain folding ones from the loading bay, set in two rows on the shop floor with an aisle between them.
On either side of the aisle, my seven people had set out every candle we had ever poured, on the pouring table and the shelves and the windowsills.
Ten Minutes was the first one lit.
Orange peel and woodsmoke filled the room, and the light from forty flames moved on the bare brick.
Caleb stood at the far end by the counter in the gray suit.
His hair was damp from a haircut and his hands were empty.
The old officiant from Linden Hill had asked to come.
He had telephoned the shop the Monday after the chapel and said, with great dignity, that he had been waiting twenty years to officiate a wedding that went the way it was supposed to.
He stood next to Caleb in his gray robe with his book open.
My father was waiting at the shop door in his best suit, with his cane in his left hand.
"Ready?" he said.
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