CHAPTER 27 #2
Wren wrote the line by hand on all three copies.
Her handwriting looked steady. She signed below it, then passed the pen to Paloma, then Junie.
The printer coughed out one more page when Junie copied the amended version, and the fresh agreement came into Wren's hands warm enough to make her palm sting.
For a second, she pressed the paper flat against the desk and let herself feel it.
Ninety days.
Paid work.
Her name, inked by her own hand.
"This doesn't mean I am staying because I can't leave," she said.
Junie nodded once. "We know."
"It doesn't mean I am waiting for Colt to decide what I am worth."
Paloma's expression gentled. "We know that too."
Wren folded her copy carefully and tucked it into the inside pocket of her tote where the old habit would have hidden bills she was afraid to open.
"Then I need to get to Sudie's cottage and put on a dress before Della fires me as sister."
"She can't," Junie said. "Family positions are hard to refill."
"Wedding positions are not," Paloma said. "Move."
Wren moved.
The road to Sudie Crane's cottage was silver with early light and still patched with damp where floodwater had cut across the low places. Wren drove with the windows cracked, the revised schedule on the passenger seat, and crushed stems scenting the back seat.
At the cottage, her half-unpacked suitcase waited in the corner where she had left it, neither leaving nor staying, a cloth argument with a broken zipper.
Wren carried the flower buckets inside first because the work still came first. Then she set her tote on Sudie's kitchen table and took out the signed agreement.
The paper had cooled, but she could still remember its heat.
She laid it beside the old sugar bowl and smoothed the fold with two fingers. Then she went to the suitcase, lifted the remaining clothes out, and put them in the dresser drawer.
It was a small act. No one saw it. It still took her longer than it should have.
Her hands slowed over a stack of shirts. She thought of Odette Pryce offering money like a door that locked from the outside, of Cressie Ames turning Wren's hunger into motive, of Colt at the rehearsal dinner correcting the story without stripping Wren's private wounds bare for public sympathy.
Her chest ached. She let it.
Staying did not mean everything was fixed. It meant she would be here tomorrow, when the flowers were gone and Colt had to decide whether trust was a thing he practiced or only promised when the music was soft.
Wren closed the dresser drawer.
"All right," she said to the empty kitchen.
The empty kitchen did not answer, which was one of its better qualities.
She washed flower sap from her wrists, put on the dress Della had chosen for her, and pinned her hair with hands that only shook twice. Before she left, she slid the signed agreement into the old ribbon box on the shelf to keep it flat.
By the time Wren reached the century-old stone chapel, morning had opened fully.
The limestone held the new sun in pale blocks.
Ribbon moved along the railings. A ranch hand carried jars toward the pasture truck.
The minister spoke quietly with Ruston near the side door.
Somewhere inside, beeswax and old hymnals gave the air a steady sweetness beneath the green bite of cut stems.
Colt's truck sat near the far fence, but Colt was not in sight.
There was a sack of feed dust on the back floorboard and a garment bag hooked over the passenger door.
Wren looked once, then made herself keep walking.
She was not building a life by reading meaning into every absence or every shadow of him at the edge of a room.
Paloma met her at the chapel steps with Beau's flower crown in both hands.
"Slight problem," Paloma said.
"We already had the flower problem."
"This is more architectural."
The crown had listed to one side where a child's eager fingers must have helped before help was requested. Wren took it gently. "This is not ruined."
"That is your official design opinion?"
"This is asymmetrical."
"It is leaning."
"Many important buildings lean."
Paloma snorted and rushed away before Wren could be drafted into another debate.
Wren carried the crown into the vestry.
Della stood in front of the long mirror with her dress half fastened and her hands clamped over her stomach.
She looked beautiful in the unfinished way brides did before someone tightened the last hook: hair pinned, eyes too bright, mouth trying to be brave while the rest of her body considered escape.
"Please tell me the flowers arrived," Della said.
"The flowers arrived."
"Please tell me you are not saying that in the voice you use when disaster has technically arrived too."
"Only minor disaster. I handled it before breakfast."
Della's eyes closed. "I love you."
"You love me now. Wait until you see the pasture tables. They are lower than planned."
"Will people have flowers?"
"Yes."
"Will I have a bouquet?"
"Yes."
"Will Beau have her crown?"
Wren lifted it. "With personality."
Della laughed, and the sound loosened something in the vestry. Wren set the crown on the vanity and went to fasten the row of hooks down the back of Della's dress.