I Prepared for My Wedding, Only to Be Shut Out of My Own Bridal Suite novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Green
We were married the next May, on a Saturday, at four o'clock, in the Harrington ballroom.
A year after the red light, almost to the day.
My mother did not want to wait any longer, and neither did I.
At three-thirty I walked up the sixth-floor hallway in my white satin robe.
Same robe. My mother had it dry-cleaned and had the word BRIDE restitched in gold.
"Waste not," she said.
She walked behind me carrying my dress over both arms.
A new one. Ivory, with long lace sleeves, from a little shop on King Street that the baker's cousin ran.
The junior drafter carried my shoes.
The sisters from Marsh Point carried the bouquet between them, white garden roses, and argued about who got to hold the ribbon.
In my robe pocket was the white keycard.
I stopped in front of 612.
"Go on," my mother said.
I touched the card to the lock.
The light turned green.
The first try.
The door swung in on the morning light and the harbor through the window.
My veil was laid out across the bed.
My grandmother's pearls lay on the pillow, with the gold rose clasp, 1968 on the back.
There was a note on the nightstand in a slanted hand.
"Nobody else has a key. C.H."
I stood in the doorway for a second.
My mother put her hand flat on my back, the way she had in the ballroom a year ago.
Then I walked in, and everyone came in behind me, talking at once.
The sisters fought over the ribbon.
The junior drafter dropped one of my shoes.
My mother cried while she buttoned me into the dress, and blamed the roses.
I let her.
At four o'clock the ballroom doors opened.
A hundred and twenty people turned around in their chairs.
My aunt in the third row, already crying.
The man from next door, in a suit that didn't fit, with a candy bar sticking out of his breast pocket.
The couple from the yellow house.
The baker, in an enormous hat.
Mason's old college roommate was there too.
He'd written to me after the gala to say he was sorry he'd filmed the first time.
This time his phone stayed in his pocket.
Beverly was not there.
She'd moved in with her sister in Columbia after the house sold.
Mason was not there.
He had five years left.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Prepared for My Wedding, Only to Be Shut Out of My Own Bridal Suite are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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