CHAPTER 10
Beckett
I was in the workshop at five a.m. because the workshop was the only room in the house that didn't smell like her shampoo.
Not working. There was nothing left to build. The arch was at the venue. The tools were cleaned and racked. The walnut shavings had been swept into the bin Thursday night. The bench was bare.
I sat on the stool and put my hands flat on the wood and tried to think the way I think about joinery — measure, mark, cut, fit. Find the problem. Fix the problem. But the problem wasn't a split tenon or a misaligned shoulder. The problem was that Nora was right, and I didn't have a tool for that.
She was right. The whole thing had started as cover. I knew that when I kissed her back at the Wisteria. I knew it when I offered her the spare room. I knew it every morning I set out the second mug and told myself it was just coffee.
And I'd let my mother believe. I'd let Mae tell Theo. I'd let a bonfire full of people hear me talk about the sound of Nora's laugh and treated the truth of it like it cancelled the lie underneath.
It didn't.
I sat in the workshop until five forty-five. Then I showered, made one cup of coffee, and drove to the Ridgewood estate.
The morning was already warm. Setup crew had the tent open.
Florists were unloading from a van near the service road.
The arch stood exactly where I'd placed it — solid, level, the walnut darkening toward honey in the early light.
The through-wedged joints were tight. The curve was clean.
At least I'd built one thing this week that held.
Eli found me by the riser at seven.
"You look like you slept in a ditch," he said.
"Slept fine."
"Liar." He handed me a coffee from the caterer's station. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened."
Eli studied me the way he does when he already knows you're lying and is deciding whether to let you keep it. He's been doing it since we were fifteen. Usually he lets it go.
Today he didn't.
"My mom called your mom last night," he said. "Donna told her the wedding's going to have two love stories tomorrow. Her words. She's bringing a camera."
I took a drink of coffee. It tasted like nothing.
"So whatever's going on with you and Nora," Eli said, "fix it before my wedding turns into a referendum on your relationship."
He clapped my shoulder and walked off to meet the caterer.
The morning moved fast. I stayed useful. Checked the arch anchors. Helped the crew level the riser. Moved chairs that had shifted overnight. I knew how to be useful. Useful was the thing I could always be when everything else failed.
By eleven the meadow looked finished. White chairs.
Aisle runner. The arch centered against the tree line with the eastern light planned to warm the ceremony from the left at four o'clock.
Flowers were being wired to the uprights — white roses and something green the florist called eucalyptus. The walnut held them well.
Nora arrived at noon with the bridesmaids. I saw Theo's truck pull up near the bridal tent. She got out. Navy dress, hair half up, sunglasses hiding whatever her face was doing.
She didn't look my way.
I went to the groomsmen's staging area and put on the suit Eli had picked — navy, no tie, white shirt — and tried not to think about the fact that in four hours I'd be standing next to her in front of every person who believed we were together.
Mae found me at two.
"You're an idiot," she said, which was her version of a greeting when she'd decided something needed to be addressed.
"Good afternoon, Mae."
"I talked to Nora."
My hands stopped on my cuff button. "When?"
"Twenty minutes ago. In the bridal tent. She looked like someone had run her over with good intentions and she was trying to figure out whether to thank them or file a report."
"That's descriptive."
"She said she's fine. She said that four times. She's not fine." Mae stepped closer. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything."
"That might be the problem."
She left. I finished the cuff button. Checked my watch. Two hours.
At three-fifteen the guests started arriving. Cars filing along the gravel drive. Families and neighbors and half of Laurel Creek dressed in summer wedding colors, filling the chairs in rows, waving to each other, settling in.
Donna was in the second row. She'd worn the blue dress she saves for occasions she considers historic. She caught my eye when I walked past and smiled with so much pride that my chest cracked along a seam I didn't know was still exposed.
At three-forty the processional lined up behind the tree line. Groomsmen and bridesmaids paired off. I stood at the front of the line next to Nora.
She was in the bridesmaid dress — sage green, fitted, bare shoulders. Her hair was pinned up with something small and gold. She smelled like the perfume she'd been wearing all week, layered now over the specific scent of hairspray and nerves and someone else's setting powder.
She looked at me for the first time since yesterday.
"Hi," she said. Quiet.
"Hi."
Her chin was up. Her shoulders were back. She was holding her bouquet like it was the only structural element keeping her vertical.
"I'm going to get through this," she said, "and then we're going to figure out what to say to people. But I'm not going to ruin my sister's wedding by falling apart in the processional."
"I know you're not."
"Okay." She faced forward.
The music started. Pairs began walking. When our turn came, she put her hand on my arm — light, professional, the minimum contact required — and we stepped into the aisle.
Every face in the meadow turned toward us.
Donna in the second row, beaming. My mother's friends behind her.
Nora's mother on the other side, hand pressed to her chest. Mrs. Delaney from the neighborhood, already dabbing her eyes and the bride hadn't even appeared yet.
Theo near the front with his camera, catching everything.
We walked. Nora's fingers stayed on my arm, and I could feel the tremor in them — tiny, controlled, visible only to someone whose entire awareness had been tuned to her frequency for five days.
We separated at the front. I went right. She went left. Four feet of open aisle between us, same as rehearsal. The longest distance I'd ever measured.
Willa came down the aisle and the meadow shifted its attention where it belonged — to the bride, to Eli's face when he saw her, to the ceremony that this whole week had been building toward.
I watched. Pastor Russell spoke. Eli's voice cracked on the first line of his vows, and the crowd made the sound crowds make when something real happens in front of them.
But I was looking at Nora.
She was crying. Not the way she'd been afraid of all week — not falling apart, not publicly humiliated, not the dumped sister making a scene.
She was crying the way you cry when your sister is getting married and the person you want to reach for is standing four feet away and you're not sure you're allowed.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Smiled. Held her bouquet tighter.
And I knew — the way I know when a joint is true, when the grain runs clean, when a piece of wood is going to hold — that I was not going to let this end with silence and a car ride.
The ceremony finished. Rings. Kiss. The crowd stood.
Music hit. Eli and Willa came back up the aisle, and then the bridal party followed, and then Nora's hand was on my arm again for the recessional and we were walking through a tunnel of faces and applause and I could feel her pulse in her fingertips.
We cleared the aisle. The bridal party scattered toward the tent for photos.
"Nora."
She turned.
"I need five minutes."
"We have photos in —"
"Five minutes. Behind the tent."
She looked at me. Searched my face for something — I don't know what. An excuse, a plan, a way to manage whatever was coming.
"Okay," she said.
Behind the tent the noise dropped to a muffle. We were out of the sightline but not out of earshot if someone came looking. Two hundred people on the other side of a canvas wall.
I didn't have a speech. Speeches weren't the tool.
"You're right," I said. "It started as a lie. You kissed me to survive a dinner, and I went along with it because it was easier than dealing with my own situation, and neither of us planned any of what happened after."
She was watching me. Arms crossed. Bouquet crushed against her ribs.
"And you're right that my mom doesn't know that. And Mae doesn't know. And Willa doesn't know. And every person sitting out there thinks the story started clean."
"Beckett —"
"I'm not done." I took a breath. "The story didn't start clean. But the coffee was real. I put out that mug because I wanted you in the room. The bonfire was real. I heard you laugh through the wall and I put down my work and I listened. Thursday was real. All of it."
She didn't move.
"I can't make the beginning honest. But I can make the rest of it honest. Starting now, starting in front of anyone you want. If you want me to walk out there and tell my mother the whole thing started as a fake-dating stunt at the Wisteria, I will. Today. Right now."
Her mouth opened.
"But I'm not going to pretend the real parts weren't real just because the beginning was a mess. I don't want to walk it back. I didn't want to walk it back Thursday, and I don't want to walk it back now."
The tent canvas moved in the breeze. On the other side, I could hear Theo calling for the bridal party, Mae laughing at something, Donna's voice carrying the way it always carries.
Nora unfolded her arms. The bouquet dropped to one hand at her side.
"You'd actually tell her," she said. Not a question.
"I'd tell anyone. I'd rather have the embarrassment of how it started than lose the thing it turned into."
"That's —" Her voice hitched. "That's an insane thing to offer at someone else's wedding."
"Probably."
"Donna is going to have feelings about this."