THE RECEPTION TENT’Sstring lights were still running, casting a low warm gold over the empty dance floor and the tables set for Saturday dinner. Four hundred guests in twelve hours.
I thought about Jules with her camera at the edge of that floor. She talked about her work like someone who’d put in thehours and wasn’t looking for permission to have done it. Specific answers. Nothing wasted.
The bluebonnets in the ceremony meadow were colorless in the pre-dawn. The whole spread had gone gray before the gold came. It was one of the things I liked about this hour — before the heat was in it, before anything needed moving or feeding or fixing. Everything just sitting there waiting to be used.
STONEY WAS ALREADYthere with Miguel and Davis from the property crew, working by headlamp, setting white ceremony chairs out from the live-oak arbor in rows. He looked up when he heard me coming through the dew-damp grass.
“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”
“Mind your wedding,” I said.
He grinned. The headlamp made it look considerably more theatrical than he intended. “I am minding it. I’ve been minding it since four-thirty.” He watched me pick up a chair. “I’m going to want to sit down with you about the photographer at some point.”
“Some point,” I said.
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s not much of a yes either. Go back to your row, Stoney.”
He went back to his row. Still smiling. I could tell by the quality of his silence. But he didn’t push it, because he knows what settled looks like whether I’ve said it or not. That’s the thing about a man who’s known you fifteen years. He reads the space between the words.
Miguel had his earbuds in. Davis counted chairs under his breath, his method for keeping his rows even, which I respected on principle. We got three more rows done before Stoney spoke again.
“She asked good questions,” he said. Like he was finishing a thought.
“Bobbie-Jean likes everyone.”
“Not even close to true.” He set a chair. “She went over the list with Jules and Jules didn’t flinch. Asked three questions. Two of them were good.” He paused. “Third one was real good.”
I didn’t respond. I set chairs.
“Just observing,” Stoney said.
“You keep saying that.”
“And yet,” said Stoney, and moved to the next row.
THE GRAY CAME UP SLOW, bleeding east to west before the overhead sky had caught up. Blue-gray everything for about twenty minutes, and then the gold would hit.
We worked through the blue. Miguel found his second wind somewhere around the fifth row and picked up the pace. Davis kept counting. Stoney had stopped making conversation and was just working, which was its own kind of company.
My hands steadied out here the way they always do. Put a task in them and the rest of you finds somewhere sensible to be. I set chairs and kept them even and let the morning come in at its own pace.
The arbor stood at the north end of the meadow, bare still. Wildflower garlands going on later this morning, once the florist’s crew arrived. Right now it was just live oak and open air and the meadow being arranged, row by row, for four hundred people who were going to show up and eat Smokestack Earl’s ribs and drink longneck Lone Stars and watch two people who deserved each other make it official. I’d been to a lot of weddings. This one I was going to pay attention to.
I picked up the next chair.
THE FIRST LIGHT CAMEup gold over the live oaks. I straightened a chair that didn’t need straightening. Stoney was already moving toward the next row. Somewhere across the property a screen door banged open — early kitchen, somebody starting the biscuits — and I thought about a woman who had sat across a table from me last night with her fingers pressed to her own collarbone, and I thought today was going to be the longest wedding of my life.
Chapter Three
Jules
THE COFFEE WAS ALREADYmade when I got to the kitchen, which meant someone had been up before me, which meant I was not, technically, the most unhinged person on this property at five in the morning. I chose to find this comforting.
The ceremony meadow was visible through the window over the sink. White chairs in even rows, nobody in them yet, the wildflower garlands not on the arbor yet either. The chairs hadn't been there at midnight. I didn't go looking for who'd put them out. I considered this a sign of excellent judgment and absolutely nothing else.
Bobbie-Jean wandered through in a silk robe. FiFi was wearing a sleep bonnet.
