The Anonymous Notes That Destroyed My Wedding novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Grand Rapids

Megan didn't answer her on the sidewalk.

She didn't say anything at all.

She just walked to the truck, got in, and shut the door.

Kelsey stood under her pink awning, crying, with half of Front Street watching her.

I left her there.

I drove to the sheriff's office and handed a deputy the sandwich bag.

He wrote down everything Kelsey had said in the salon.

He asked how many witnesses.

"About fifteen," I said. "One of them left in foils."

Megan didn't talk the whole way home.

She sat with her knees up on the seat and her forehead on the window.

At supper she pushed Gran's pot roast around her plate.

Gran watched her do it for a while.

Then she put her fork down.

"Out with it, honey," she said. "Whatever it is. It's not getting lighter in there."

Luke looked up from his plate.

Megan looked at me.

"Kelsey said you weren't the first," I said. "I'm asking you. Not her."

Megan took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

"Six years ago he was engaged to a girl from Grand Rapids," she said. "She taught second grade. Her family had a cottage on a little lake north of town. Her great-grandfather built it."

Nobody moved.

"Her parents loved him. Everybody loves him at first. They put the cottage in both their names for an engagement present."

I felt Gran go still beside me.

"Four months later he broke it off," Megan said. "He told everybody she was unstable. He used the voice."

"I know the voice," I said.

"Then he sued her for his half. The judge made them sell it. He got ninety thousand dollars and bought a boat."

"Jesus," Luke said quietly.

"I was eighteen. I heard it at our dinner table." Megan's voice went flat. "My mother called it Shane's settlement. She said the girl was hysterical. She said it like she was talking about the weather."

She put her glasses back on.

Her hands were shaking.

"And when you two got engaged and Gran talked about the deed, I told myself it was different. He loved you. He ate your pie. I believed my mother for five years, Libby, because it was easier."

"Megan."

"I should've told you in May. I should've told you at the craft night. I wrote place cards with you for three hours and I didn't say a word."

I looked at the window over the sink.

The orchard was going gold in the evening light.

I did the math the way I'd done it on the church steps.

"He wasn't going to wait for a sale," I said. "He was going to marry me, get on the deed, and divorce me."

"By Christmas, probably," Megan whispered.

"And then a judge sells the farm."

"And he takes half."

Luke set his fork down very carefully.

"My company did eight months of diligence on this land," he said. "Soil, water, title, shoreline. Nobody spent one hour on him."

Gran reached across the table.

She put her knotted hand on top of Megan's small one.

"You told her," Gran said. "In the end, you told her. In a jar, with the wrong hand. That counts."

Megan started to cry.

Gran didn't let go.

"You're eating supper at this table until you're forty," she said. "And you're never making the sandwiches again."

Megan laughed into her napkin.

The phone on the wall rang.

Gran got up to answer it.

I watched her listen.

Her eyebrows went up, and then her mouth went thin.

"Thank you," she said. "No, I appreciate it. Six pies. I'll hold them for you."

She hung up.

"That was Shane's boss," she said. "The sheriff's office called him this afternoon asking about Shane. An hour later, the pending sale came off the screen."

Luke's head came up.

"Withdrawn," Gran said. "By the buyer."

I looked across the table at him.

He took out his phone and checked it.

He put it face down on the table.

"He never answered my text," he said. "He wouldn't close with a sheriff asking questions. He's careful."

"So it's gone."

"The paper's gone," he said. "He isn't."

I couldn't sleep that night.

I lay in my bed with the window open and the crickets going.

I put on my blue sundress and his Chicago sweatshirt over it, and my canvas sneakers.

At eleven thirty I walked down the path past the packing shed.

Cabin three had a light on.

I knocked.

He opened the door in a white T-shirt and khakis, barefoot, with a paperback in one hand and his cracked glasses on.

He looked at me.

At the sweatshirt.

"That's mine," he said.

"I know."

His mouth moved.

"Your father's name is off my farm," I said.

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