Chapter 24: The Chapel

We reached Reno on Saturday just before dawn, and the neon sign was still lit.

It was pink and blue and one letter short, and it buzzed over the door of a low white building on a street of pawn shops.

I parked the truck across the road and sat with my hands on the wheel.

Cade had not said a word for the last forty miles.

"It's smaller than I remember," I said.

"You remember it?"

"Not all of it. Just the sign." I looked at him. "Just that I was cold, and it was the only light on."

"That's what I thought."

In the back seat, the dog lifted his head and gave a single bored sneeze.

I had put on Edie's kind of dress, the ivory one with the covered buttons, and Cade had put on a white shirt he had ironed three times.

He wore no vest.

He had left it on the clubhouse bar with a note under it that said, Back Monday.

I got out of the truck and crossed the street in my good boots.

When I pulled the chapel door, a bell rang.

The same dollar-store veil hung on a hook behind the counter, with a price tag on it.

A very old man looked up from a newspaper.

"Well," he said. "Forty dollars."

I started to laugh.

"You're the minister," I said. "Four years ago. You signed."

"I sign a lot of things." He squinted at Cade. "Ah. You're the one who sat in the corner all night and wouldn't leave. You came back."

"I did," said Cade.

"Did she come back too?"

"She's here."

The old man looked at me over his glasses.

"Sober?" he said.

"Completely."

"Good. That changes the paperwork."

The door banged behind us, and a woman's voice shouted, "We're not late! We took a wrong turn at Sacramento!"

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