Chapter 24: Paid in Full

Mara's POV

I planned my own wedding in nineteen days, and this time I did not pay for the wrong things.

There were forty guests, one quartet, and no run sheet longer than a page.

The date was a Saturday, at eight in the evening, on the Villa MacIntyre terrace.

Eight in the evening in Amalfi was two in the afternoon at Aldergrove.

I had picked the hour on purpose, and Cal had asked me why, and I had told him it was a private joke between me and a ballroom.

By seven the lanterns were lit along the stone wall.

Florence had flown in on Tuesday and taken over his kitchen with a fierceness that made the cook weep with joy.

The almond cake stood on the long table under a net, with a small lemon cake beside it for me.

Cal had made the cook swear to keep the two apart.

I stood in the doorway of the suite in my mother's lace.

I had gotten it back from the Aldergrove bridal room in a garment bag, with a note pinned to it in Kelsey's handwriting that I had not read.

A seamstress in the village had steamed out the wrinkles, and let out nothing, and taken in nothing.

It fit.

The three crewmen sat in the second row on folding chairs, in new jackets.

The old man in the feed cap had insisted on wearing it to the ceremony until Florence took it off his head.

The younger one cried before I had even reached the aisle.

My father's notebook lay on a small table by the arch, beside a photograph of him in his hard hat, grinning.

He had his harness clipped, because it was always clipped, and the photographer had caught the buckle.

I walked alone.

Cal had asked me, three weeks ago, whether I wanted anyone to give me away.

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