The Wedding Night by Harriet Walker (story reading txt) 📕

“What a twat,” Effie said conversationally.

“He’s lying,” Lizzie said. “Ignore him, he’s lying.”

“No,” Effie said, dry-eyed still and marveling at the fact. “He’s not lying.”

She knew that Ben had told her the truth because, for the first time in months, everything suddenly seemed to make sense. The questions had stopped, the endless internal match replays of conversations. The suspicions, the regrets, the if only I’d…

“But, Ben?” she called to the man in the doorway. A man she had once thought her superior but had realized, earlier this week in fact, that he was far less intelligent than she was, not to mention far less funny.

I will never again make do with someone.

I will never again persuade myself to like someone.

I will never assume that somebody else’s company is better than my own.

“You’re a twat too.”

Iso squealed and Ben’s handsome face briefly cracked with a snarl as he left the stage not to rapture but to ridicule. As he turned and crossed the length of the Hall, a silent chorus of heads swiveled and heard, from inside, the historic creaking of the paneled door before it closed again and, beyond it, an engine revved into readiness.

Anna turned to Effie, seized her hands where they lay in her lap, determined not to be late to her side when she most needed support. Not again, never again.

“It’s fine.” Effie squeezed her friend’s fingers, then reached for her glass and sipped. “I’m fine. Weirdly.”

She smiled, and when the smile reached her eyes, she touched her cheek to make sure her face hadn’t cracked like cold porcelain in a hot oven.

“I might actually be better than fine.” She shook herself as though waking from a daze.

“Music?” asked Steve, darting back through the doors and flicking a switch.

Those horns, that Motown beat, the high hat.

“Happiness condensed to three minutes,” he said with a smile, and stood beneath the trellis arch, taking up his official role as wedding DJ once again. Anna joined him and wriggled under one of her husband’s arms to lean against him and survey the scene on the terrace. The lights twinkled on, but the smiles outshone them in even more brilliant wattage.

Lizzie and Dan stood uncertainly and began to sway under the stars to the beat, the soaring strings. Their first dance, finally.

“My God, Dan!” called Anna, as the groom broke into a series of well-judged steps. “You really mastered that routine.”

Next to them, Charlie and Iso clasped together and twirled. Her putty-pink dress billowed as she spun, and when he whipped her back into his arms, Charlie dropped his dark head against hers.

“I was going to ask you,” he muttered into her ear, and she laughed and wriggled as his breath tickled the soft skin. “I swear, I was going to ask you tonight, but I don’t want to steal their thunder.”

Iso smiled and moved off again, shimmying to the rhythm of the song. “I know you were,” she called back to him. “And yes!”

By the table, Effie and Bertie stood eyeing the others like a pair of awkward scarecrows, sentinels to the dance floor unfolding before them but unable, in their stiffness, to engage with it.

“Don’t you want to dance?” she said teasingly, tapping her foot.

He shook his head quite firmly. “You definitely don’t want to see me dancing.”

“Oh, come on!” Effie yanked on his arm and spun herself into Bertie’s chest, where—as she landed—he scooped her into an elaborate salsa in perfect time to the music.

“What?” she yelled gleefully over the tune.

“They made us learn at school,” he said apologetically as he twisted and marched her expertly, counting under his breath before executing a perfect if robotic turn and steering her back across the patio like a wheelbarrow.

On the next dip, the ends of her hair grazing the flagstones, Effie threw back her head to look at the clear moon where it floated in the sky on a lavender tide.

When Bertie pulled his dancing partner upright again, he spun her away and Effie’s feet, bare on the terrace since she had kicked off her beaded sandals, skittered backward along the ripples of the still sun-warmed granite beneath. She felt herself floating away from the epicenter of the party, untethered and bobbing at the edge of the group. The fairy lights warped in her vision, and the music seemed to slow.

Not again.

This time, she landed. In a pair of arms so strong, so familiar, so warm and protective she could feel the love radiating through them like a heartbeat in time with the music.

Inches from her face, Lizzie’s smile beamed through the dark, the dimples in her cheeks such familiar landmarks that Effie felt she had walked through her front door and back into her life.

Effie turned her face, angled her chin, and the lips that pressed on her temple were the same soft touch that baptized Sonny anew after every trip, tumble, and gritty graze. Anna curled an arm round each of them, and the three women swayed together. The same hug, the same huddle, whether minutes had passed or months, weeks or years.

Home.

“In sickness and in health,” murmured Lizzie.

Effie closed her eyes and nodded. These women were her past and her future, so many ends and beginnings, so many lives old and new. Whether false starts or ever afters, the three of them held an eternity in their arms.

“For richer, for poorer,” Anna croaked, her throat tight.

The still point of the turning world; there the dance is.

Effie laughed and felt her heart wing up to join the silver orb, full and gleaming, above them.

She bent her head to theirs and whispered, “I do.”

To Freda, who has blossomed alongside these pages, and Douglas, whose heart started beating during the edits

Acknowledgments

The first draft of The Wedding Night was written in what now feels like another lifetime and a different world—one where we could socialize and travel freely, celebrate en masse and meet each