My Tribal Rule Said Marry Or Matchmake novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Wedding

"They're two hours early," I said.

"They're always two hours early," said Granny behind me. "They want the good pews."

She was already dressed, in her blue church dress and her pink lipstick.

She had my dress over her arm.

It was hers, ivory cotton with lace at the collar, from the summer she married my granddaddy.

Jeb's mama had taken it in at the waist.

Sheree came in with a curling iron in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

"Sit," she said. "Nobody in this hollow is going to say I let you get married with flat hair."

***

At eleven o'clock, the church was so full people stood in the yard and listened through the windows.

The arbor stood at the front, under the plain wooden cross.

Somebody had wound it with honeysuckle and white ribbon.

Granny walked me down the aisle on her cane.

It took a long time.

Nobody minded.

Halfway down, she stopped and looked up at me.

"Don't you cry," she said. "You'll ruin Sheree's work."

"You're crying."

"I'm eighty. I'm allowed."

The Ohio buyer and his wife were on the aisle, beaming like they'd matched us themselves.

The sixteen-year-old coder was there in a borrowed tie.

The old crew from the mill sat together in their feed caps, which their wives made them take off.

Jeb was waiting under the arbor in a dark suit.

He was wearing the green tie.

When I reached him, I looked at it and raised an eyebrow.

"Woodstove wouldn't take it," he said.

The front three pews heard him and laughed.

Granny put my hand in his.

Then she went and sat in the front pew next to the elder, and took his hand too.

The preacher did the words.

Then it was my turn.

I said what I'd written, which was about ladders, and my granny, and coming home.

My voice held until the last line, then broke on it.

Nobody minded that either.

Then it was his.

Jeb looked at me.

He didn't take out a paper. He didn't have one.

His ears were already red.

"I stood up in this church once and said no," he said.

"I've been saying yes ever since. I'm going to keep saying it."

The church went so quiet I could hear the honeysuckle bees.

He'd said it to me in a sawmill at midnight.

It was better in a church.

The preacher had to clear his throat twice before he could finish.

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