10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
BEN
My family arrives at noon, and I finally relax a little.
Trucks up the track, doors slamming, Callahans unfolding out of every cab.
Ethan and Josie, Grace scrubbed shiny and in boots under her dress because some negotiations can’t be won, and Mason in a clip-on tie he’s already pulling at.
Luke and Amy. Maeve and Jack. Noah and Quinn.
Regan. And Caleb, first out, crossing the yard to me with his hand already out and Bear-shaped dog hair still on his good jacket.
“You clean up all right,” he says.
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m withholding further judgment till I see you tie the bow tie.”
The Lockharts fold them straight in, because that’s what Lockharts do. For half an hour the two families stand around in the same meadow drinking sweet tea, and it’s the best half hour of the day. It will be the best half hour of the day by a distance that isn’t close.
At one o’clock, the photographer takes me away for the first look.
That was Carla’s idea months back, and she’d laughed when I asked about bad luck.
Superstition’s for people who expect something to go wrong, baby.
It’s like her mama and the rehearsal dinners.
The Vaughns don’t hold with luck. They’ve never needed it.
So instead of waiting at an altar for doors to open, I stand on the little timber bridge with my back turned, per instructions, while the creek runs under my boots, and on the count the photographer’s assistant gives, I turn around.
And there’s my bride.
Carla is beautiful. The dress is beautiful.
She comes down the meadow path with her train carried behind her and the mountains stacked up blue over her shoulder, and she does a spin at the end of the bridge, laughing.
The camera eats it up, and I stand there in my good suit pulling all the expressions expected of me.
The first look isn’t for the couple. It’s for the couple to watch later, to prove it happened.
“Well?” she says, glittering. “Worth the wait?”
“Worth the wait,” I say, and she laughs and kisses my cheek, careful of the lipstick. Forty feet away, I catch sight of Ella at the edge of the shot, holding the reflector board a stranger handed her, watching us with a face I can’t read at this distance.
Then it’s an hour of arranged happiness.
On the bridge, off the bridge, under the big oak, Carla’s hand on my chest, my hand on her waist, look at her, look away, laugh.
I stand where I’m put. I’m good at that.
Between setups, Carla checks her phone in a bridesmaid’s hand, and the photographer says we’re chasing the light.
Down the hill the cars are coming in, guests in their county best walking up to a barn with its doors thrown wide.
Somewhere in the middle of it, while they reset the shot and Carla’s off having her train fluffed, Ella appears at my elbow with a glass of water and a straw.
“Straw, so you don’t wreck your collar. Drink. You’ve been in full sun for forty minutes and nobody’s thought about it.”
I drink. She’s right. She’s always right about things nobody thinks about.
While I drink, she frowns at my chest, says, “hold still,” and resets my boutonniere a quarter inch, her knuckles brushing the lapel, quick and businesslike.
It’s nothing. Fixing the groom is her job.
Except in one hour of being photographed from every angle, it’s the only thing that’s happened to me that wasn’t for a camera.
“Thank you,” I say.
“No problem, it’s my job.” She’s already backing away, eyes over my shoulder, on to the next fire.
Two thirty. Ceremony at three.
They put me in the barn’s side room to wait, the little finished tack room Ella turned into a groom’s room with a mirror, a chair, and a carafe of water, because she thinks of everything. Caleb’s with me. He ties the bow tie in one pass, smooths it flat, and looks at me in the mirror.
“Last chance for the truck,” he says. It’s a joke, but it doesn’t feel like one, and neither of us laughs. That should tell me something, but I’m not listening to anything today except the schedule.
He puts both hands on my shoulders, and for a minute my brother looks at me in the mirror the way nobody else alive is allowed to.
“You raised me,” he says. “Whole way up. You know that. So whatever today is, whatever it turns into, you did every part of your life right, and I’d stand up for you in front of anybody.” He pats my shoulders twice, done, embarrassed, reaching for the exit. “Even in that fucking tie.”
“Rings,” I say instead of the rest of it, because if I say the rest of it, we’ll both be unfit for company.
“Garrett’s got them.” Caleb’s mouth twists when he says the name. He’s been civil today at my asking, and it’s cost him. “That’s the one job the man has.”
At five to three, Naomi puts her head in. She’s robed up, folder in hand, calm as deep water. “Full house,” she says. “Beautiful crowd. We’ll get you set in two minutes.” Then she pauses, one hand on the doorframe, and looks at me a beat longer than the schedule needs. “You good, son?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mm,” she says, and goes.
Two minutes. The barn on the other side of the wall has gone to that rustling hush a crowd makes when it’s ready.
I can hear the string trio Carla’s mama insisted on tuning up.
My collar’s fine. My hands are fine. Everything’s fine, and in a few minutes I’ll be a married man, and the quiet life starts, the one I’ve always wanted.
The door opens, and it’s the wedding coordinator version of Ella, headset, clipboard, venue smile. The smile’s not sitting right today. It hasn’t sat right since the coffee urn, and there’s something at the back of her eyes I keep almost catching.
“It’s time,” she says. “Naomi’s in place.
Except…” The clipboard comes up like a shield.
“Small thing. Garrett’s not at his mark.
Nobody’s seen him in twenty minutes and he’s got the rings.
Carla’s not answering the girls’ knock, probably nerves, so…
Could you…” She stops. Starts again. “Actually, no. I’ll go. You stay here. I’ll find them.”
“Ella. You’ve got four hundred jobs and I’ve got one, and mine’s canceled till there’s rings.” I’m already moving. “Where’d they see him last?”
“Ben.” Her voice does a thing I’ve never heard it do. Her hand comes off the clipboard halfway up, like she’s going to stop me with it. “Ben, wait, I…”
“Two minutes,” I tell her, easy, and I go out the side door into the sun.
The restrooms are around the back, the block Ella finished first because brides remember bathrooms, she told me, and nobody ever wrote a review about an altar.
Both doors are standing open. Empty. I check the honeymoon cabin porch from a distance.
Nothing. It’s cool back here in the barn’s shadow, the music and the crowd hush coming through the boards, muffled.
I stand a second in the quiet, working the problem, because that’s what I’m for.
A man in a lilac tie doesn’t wander far in loafers. Where does anyone go back here?
Then I see it. Across the yard, past the woodpile, the old equipment barn where the Lockharts keep the baler and the mower and everything else that bites. Silas walked me through it my first morning. It’s the one building on this ranch with no reason in the world for wedding guests.
Its side door is open four inches.
I cross the yard. Behind me, through the barn wall, faint and sweet, the string trio finds its tuning, and the processional starts. Three o’clock. Doors opening. An aisle with nobody in it yet, and a room full of people turning in their seats.
That’s when I hear Carla laugh.
I know her different laughs. There’s the bell one for rooms, and the camera one, and there’s the low one, the private one, the one I used to think was mine.
It’s coming through the four-inch gap in that door, and it’s tangled up in a voice underneath it, a man’s voice.
I understand what’s happening the way you understand ice under your boot in the same instant it goes.
The processional swells on the other side of the yard. Somewhere in that barn, four hundred feet behind me, my entire family is waiting to watch me marry Carla Vaughn.
And I’m standing in the grass outside an equipment barn, listening to my bride laugh her private laugh at another man.
I put my hand flat on the door.