Chapter 19: The Dedication

On Sunday the church garden was full.

Folding chairs stood in rows on the grass, and the whole congregation sat in them in their good clothes, with programs fanned in their hands.

At the front, under a white cloth, stood a plaque on a short bronze post.

I walked up the gravel path in a navy dress I had last worn to my mother's funeral.

Warren walked on my right.

Owen and Caleb came behind us, in suits that didn't quite fit Caleb.

Graham was waiting at the gate.

He'd come straight from somewhere, with his tie perfect and his jaw set.

"I said I'd stand with you," he said.

He took my left arm without asking, and I let him.

The murmur in the garden changed as we came down the aisle.

Heads turned, and then turned back, and then turned again.

I watched people work it out.

Four men and one woman, close together, in front of her mother's rose bed.

I saw the woman from the casserole in the front row, in a lavender suit, with her hands folded on her knee.

She smiled at me.

It was the smile of someone who has laid a trap, and she was looking forward to watching.

The minister spoke for a long time about grace and memory, and I didn't hear a word.

Then the woman rose, and walked to the front, and took the microphone from him with a small apologetic nod.

"We're so grateful to have Tessa with us today," she said. "Her mother was a dear friend to everyone here."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Stepfather and His Friends from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.