"I know," he said. "Hargrove called me an hour ago."
I stopped. "You already knew."
"Was going to tell you tonight." A pause. "Didn't want you to feel like you were being pushed into something."
I looked out at the street. At the spot where Arlo had been standing. At Marlena, visible through the diner window, watching me with her arms crossed and her face doing nothing at all.
"Gage."
"Mm."
"Ask me," I said.
A beat. "Millie. Will you marry me."
"Yes," I said. "Obviously yes. Now stop being careful with me and go call whoever you need to call."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Yes ma'am."
I hung up.
Haven was staring at me. "Did you just—on the phone?—"
"He already asked properly," I said. "Months ago. That was just logistics."
Haven grabbed a piece of cornbread and pointed it at me. "You are the most unbothered person I have ever met."
I smiled and blushed. “Guess Gage is rubbing off on me.”
TWENTY
Gage
The ceremony took eleven minutes.
I know because my dad timed it and reported this to my mother afterward with the satisfied expression of a man who considered efficiency a virtue. Eleven minutes, a judge, and two witnesses—Daniela, who cried through the whole thing, and Stetson, who didn't but stood very straight and looked like a man taking something seriously.
Millie wore a dress the color of heavy cream, simple, nothing complicated, her hair loose the way I liked it. She walked toward me across the courthouse lawn with her hand on her stomach—habit now, always that hand—and the October light was doing something unreasonable to her and I looked at her and thought:there it is. That's the thing I didn't know I was waiting for.
I told her so, quietly, while the judge was still talking.
She looked up at me. "Right now?"
"Seemed like the right time."
"Gage." Her eyes went bright. "I'm going to cry."
"I know," I said. "I love you anyway."
She laughed—wet and undone—and the judge paused and looked at us over his glasses and we saidsorryin unison and finished getting married.
The reception was at the main house. My mother had transformed it in the three weeks since Millie had saidobviously yeson the phone outside the Creekside Diner—string lights in the live oaks, tables on the lawn, Elena Calloway installed in the kitchen two days ago and already running half of it. My mother had ceded the counter space without argument, which told me everything I needed to know about how that relationship was going to go.
I stood on the porch and watched it all happen.
My dad and Robert Calloway were at the far end of the lawn. My dad had his hands moving the way he did when he was explaining the geology of the creek bed, and Robert was nodding along with the expression of a man who hadn't expected to spend his daughter's wedding reception learning about limestone and was finding, to his own surprise, that he didn't mind.
My mother and Elena stood close at the food table, already talking in the shorthand of women who've decided to be friends and are simply getting started. My mother laughed—a real one.
