Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Microphone

The laughing went on too long.

Somebody whistled.

Celine had her phone up in the front row, and the little red light was on.

Bennet stood in the spotlight with the mop and didn't move at all.

He looked almost peaceful.

I walked across the dance floor.

My boots were loud on the concrete.

Spence was still grinning into the microphone when I took it out of his hand.

"Thanks, Spence," I said. "My turn."

The speakers squealed.

The laughing thinned out.

I'd known most of these people since I was in diapers.

My kindergarten teacher was at the cookie table.

The man who sold my father his first truck was standing by the ladder truck in a Santa hat.

"Most of you know me," I said. "I'm Carolyn Lawler's granddaughter. I make rifle scopes in Pittsburgh."

A few people nodded.

"Some of you know Spence asked me to marry him. Three times."

Somebody went "ooh."

"What you don't know is how he asked the fourth time."

Spence stepped toward me.

"Alana, come on, it's a party."

I turned my shoulder to him.

"He threatened my shop to get a yes."

The hall went quiet in a different way.

"So I'm asking you, since you all know him. Is that how a man proposes in Pine Hollow?"

"That's a lie," Spence said loudly.

"My foreman was standing right there. Want me to call him?"

He didn't answer.

"So I married the man on the bench in my lobby," I said. "The one Spence laughed at. And he is the best man I have ever met in my life."

I looked across the floor at Bennet.

He'd lowered the mop.

He was looking at me like nobody else was in the room.

"You laughed with Spence just now. Look at my husband. Then look at Spence."

I turned back to the room.

"So if you want to laugh at somebody tonight, I'd pick a different man."

Nobody laughed.

Then the old man in the Santa hat started clapping.

Then my kindergarten teacher.

Then a whole table of women from my grandmother's church.

It rolled across the fire hall.

Spence stood there with his hands open, smiling at nothing.

"One more thing," I said into the microphone. "Raise your hand if Spence ever told you he could get you a job at Ironvale."

There was a pause.

Then a hand went up by the tree.

Then four more.

Then a dozen, all over the hall, slow and embarrassed.

Spence's tan went blotchy.

"I'll help him count," I said, and handed him back the microphone.

He didn't use it.

He walked out the side door with Deena hurrying after him in her sequins.

Celine stayed in the front row, staring at her phone.

I walked past her to get to Bennet.

Her screen was full of comments.

I saw one before she covered it with her thumb.

"Your cousin just ended that man's whole career. Who's the busboy and is he single."

"He's not," I said.

Celine shoved the phone in her pocket.

Bennet untied the apron and folded it and set it on the cocoa table.

Then he peeled off the name tag that said BUDDY and stuck it on my coat, over my heart.

"Keep it," he said.

"You were supposed to say something back to him."

"You said it better."

The snow had stopped by the time we got back to Mill Road.

My grandmother's light was already off.

I didn't want to go inside yet.

I took his hand and pulled him across the frozen yard to the barn.

My grandfather had strung lights along the hayloft beams forty years ago, big old-fashioned colored bulbs, and my grandmother still turned them on every December.

I flipped the switch by the door.

The loft glowed red and green and gold above us.

"I used to hide up there when Deena yelled at my father," I said.

Bennet looked up at the ladder.

"Show me."

I climbed first.

The loft was colder than the yard, and the colored bulbs swung a little when I stood up.

Bennet came up behind me.

He stood close enough that his breath touched the back of my neck.

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