Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
But she doesn’t say it, because if she does, I might disagree with her. She won’t risk it. She always told me my face would be my fortune. And in her eyes, this day confirms it. I’m marrying into money.
I nod and force a half smile. “I think I just need some air.”
“Someone open a window,” she calls, but my sisters ignore her. I don’t want an open window. I want to look up at the gray Oregon sky and ask God whether I’m doing the right thing.
Before she can stop me, I gather up my skirt, toss it over my arm, and beeline toward the hotel room door. “I’ll be five minutes,” I call over my shoulder.
“Rosey Williams, come back here,” my mother calls. Her voice closes in on me, and before I can make it out the door, she grabs me. “Get back here.”
“My hair and makeup are done,” I say. “I’m ready. There’s thirty minutes before I need to be downstairs. I just want to talk to Frank about something.” It’s a lie. Frank is the last person I want to see. Despite the way he’s always trying to help me—help us—he’s not the person I’d run to in a crisis. Not that he doesn’t care about me. I think he really does. But the only person I can count on is me. I learned that lesson a long time ago.
“About what?” she hisses. “You’re going to be walking down the aisle to him soon enough.”
There’s a crash behind us and my sisters start assigning blame. In the split second my mother’s distracted, I manage to slip out the door. My heart pounds in my chest like I’ve just escaped a kidnapping. Slamming my whole palm against the elevator call button, I glance back down the corridor. No one’s chasing me. Yet.
The elevator doors spring open immediately, like they’re a getaway car idling at the curb. I expect Frank to be waiting for me in the lobby, but when the doors open, there’s an eerie quiet I wasn’t expecting.
I’m wearing a wedding dress. It’s not like I can fly under the radar, but I casually cross the lobby to the front door like I’m in sweatpants and my Oregon State t-shirt.
I just need some air. Some time to breathe. To think.
I step outside and it’s like there’s a roof on the world, it’s so completely full of low clouds.
“Okay, God,” I say out loud. “I don’t think we’ve actually had this talk. But I need to know whether you think I should be marrying a man twenty years older than me who I don’t love because he bought my mom’s trailer and kept my sister out of jail?”
I wait for a sign. A frog or two falling from the sky. A bird shitting on my dress. Anything.
God doesn’t respond.
I stamp my white pump into the gravel beneath my feet. “Fuck.”
“Need a lift somewhere?” a woman’s voice asks from my left. A figure in a white shirt and black pants pushes off from where she’s leaning against the wall.
Is she talking to me? A woman comes into view and I realize it’s Polly Gifford. We went to high school together, but ran in different circles. From what I heard, she got married at nineteen and had three kids before she turned twenty-three. “Polly?”
She twirls a bunch of keys around her finger and rounds the hood of the cab parked in front of the hotel. “I’ve got an airport pickup.” She shrugs. “I can drop you there.”
My chest lifts as I consider her suggestion. The airport? “Where would I go?”
She chuckles. “The fuck outta here? I don’t know. You just don’t look like you want to be here. You can stay and ask God for guidance, or you can get a free lift to Eugene Airport. Choice is yours.”
A thrill chases down my spine as I consider her offer. My phone is tucked into my bra—the only way to hang on to your phone with three sisters—so I wouldn’t need my wallet. But I don’t even have a jacket.
Or my freaking passport.
My heart sinks. No one’s letting me on an airplane without ID. I chew on the inside of my lip. It’s in the safe in the honeymoon suite—the room I just left. Frank made me apply for my passport when he told me we were going on an overseas trip. Why didn’t I bring it down with me?
Because I wasn’t planning on Polly Gifford offering me a ride out of my life.
Polly taps the roof of the cab. “Enjoy your wedding day, Rosey Williams.” She opens the cab door.
“Wait!” I say. I don’t have a plan. Or a place to go. I just know that I don’t want to get married. Not today. Not to Frank. “I need to grab my ID. It’s upstairs. Can you wait five minutes?”