My Groom Walked Out, So His Brother Took His Place novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Porch at Midnight

Jude's father lays out the plan to end the marriage in November, and Jude says yes, sir while knowing exactly what he knew.

Jude's POV

My father found me on the back porch at midnight, with two glasses and the good bourbon.

I had been standing there an hour, looking at the barn.

The light in the east guest room had gone out at eleven.

I knew because I had been counting the windows.

"That went well," Alvin said.

He put a glass in my hand and sat down in the swing.

"It went," I said.

"The Express-News called at nine," Alvin said. "They want a photograph Monday. The younger brother, the vet bride. I told them yes."

"She's working Monday," I said.

"Then they'll photograph her working."

He drank and looked out at the dark pasture.

My father is sixty and looks fifty, and has never in his life raised his voice to get what he wanted.

"Here's how this goes," Alvin said.

"You keep her in the picture through the third of November. You go to the Chamber breakfasts and the Founders' Day dance."

He sipped.

"You let people say the sweet things about how brave she is."

"And on the fourth?"

"On the fourth I'm a United States senator, and the marriage ends quietly.

No scandal. Two people rushed in to help a family."

He turned the glass.

"Your brother will have had his months to get over himself," Alvin said.

"He comes home, he apologizes to the girl, and in the spring he marries her properly."

"People forgive a delay. They like a second chance."

I held very still.

"You're giving her back to Wendell."

"I'm giving her what she was promised. You're keeping the seat warm, son."

He said it kindly.

That was the worst of it, that he honestly thought he was being kind.

I could have thrown the bourbon off the porch.

I could have told him that she had a name.

I could have told him she had sat on a trunk in the tack room and set terms.

She had looked at me with her chin up and her eyes wet and told me nobody could touch her.

I didn't say it.

If my father knew what I wanted, he'd use it.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Good boy."

He clapped my shoulder and went in.

I stood a long time with the glass in my hand.

Here is what I hadn't told anyone.

Thursday night, at the rehearsal dinner in the old Gasthaus, Wendell had pulled me into the wine cellar and shut the door.

He was sweating through his shirt.

He told me he couldn't marry her.

He said he had been seeing someone in Austin for two years.

She tended bar and wrote songs and didn't know a thing about politics.

He said he had tried to end it and couldn't.

I'd told him to say so to Bryn that night.

He said it would humiliate her before the family.

He said he'd do it right in the morning, he'd sit her down alone before the church.

He asked me to hold the ring and not say anything.

I should have gone up the stairs and told her myself.

I knew it then and I know it now.

I went upstairs, and I sat at the table across from her, and she laughed at something her cousin said.

She had her hair up.

She was happy.

I told myself it wasn't mine to tell.

I told myself Wendell might do it right.

That was a lie, and it was not the only one.

The other lie was the ring box.

My mother's band had been in my jacket pocket since Thursday, in a velvet box I'd kept in a drawer for eleven years.

I had put it there before the wine cellar, before Wendell said anything.

I hadn't asked myself why.

I had worked hard at not asking.

Two years ago I was in the east barn at three in the morning.

A heifer was in trouble and the vet was on her way.

She came in out of the rain in a canvas coat, mud to her knees, a braid down her back.

She looked at me once.

"You. Hold the light," she said.

I held the light.

She worked with her arm in the heifer to the shoulder.

She talked low to the animal the whole time.

When the calf came, wet and sideways and alive, she sat back on her heels in the straw and laughed.

Her face was lit from under by the lamp in my hand.

I'd never seen anything like it.

She didn't remember me.

Two weeks later my brother brought her to the ranch to meet our father, with a ring, and said, "Look who I found."

I had stood in the kitchen and shaken her hand.

For fourteen months I had watched her come to Sunday dinner and sit by my brother.

I had done nothing, because she was his, and because she was happy.

And this morning, in that church, he'd said the words and walked out.

And my father had lifted his chin at me.

I wanted to be clear about that, to myself, since nobody else would ever ask.

I was already on the step.

I had my feet moving before he looked.

My phone buzzed on the porch rail.

It was a number I didn't know, from a Texas area code.

I answered.

"Jude."

"Where are you?" Wendell said.

"A bar on Sixth. Don't tell Dad."

Wendell's voice was wet.

"Is she okay? Did she cry? I texted her, I shouldn't have, I just..."

"Wendell," I said.

"Tell me she's all right. You'd tell me."

I looked down the length of the porch at a dark window in the east wing.

"She's not yours to ask about," I said.

I hung up.

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