My Husband Played Stranger, So I Took Off the Ring novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Garden

The garden behind Maple Court had one bench, six rose bushes, and a brick path wide enough for a wheelchair.

By Saturday noon it also had forty folding chairs, a leaning arch, and a cake the diner owner had baked himself.

"It's lopsided," he said, to nobody.

"It's perfect," said Maisie, and ate a rose from the top.

Nate had built the arch.

It had taken him three evenings, a borrowed drill, and a lot of help from the two women from the dish pit.

It leaned left.

"It's got character," Bridie said, and propped it up with her bat.

I stood at the garden door in a plain ivory dress that Maisie and Bridie had found at a consignment shop, with my brown hair pinned up by a dozen pins.

It had a high neck and long sleeves, and it fit.

I'd cried in the dressing room.

I wasn't going to cry now.

My mother sat in her wheelchair at the end of the brick path with her oxygen tank tucked beside her seat.

She wore a pale blue jacket and lipstick the color of strawberries.

"Come here," she said.

I crouched in front of her.

She looked me up and down, slowly, and her sharp grey eyes filled up.

"Well," she said. "I'll be."

"Mom."

"Don't. I'll start, and I'll never stop." She dabbed at her face with a tissue. "Turn around."

I turned.

She pinned something to the back of my dress, a small thing, cool and round.

"What is it?"

"It's your father's bottle cap," she said. "Something old. It's been in my jewelry box since you were a baby."

The garden went blurry, and I put my hand over my mouth.

"Now," she said. "Push me down the aisle, before I change my mind about being sentimental."

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