The Reception the Whole Town Gave

“One hundred forty,” Arlie said quietly beside me. “That’s what we planned for.”

“How many out there?”

He counted rows, counted fence. “Two hundred. Maybe more. Sixty-one cars out front and they’ve parked three blocks down.”

“Do we have food for two hundred?”

“We have food for four,” my husband said, like a man who could not entirely believe it.

It was twelve fifty. In ten minutes Pastor Wade would bless the meal, and Lindy would cut the cake, and the whole churchyard would sit down together in the October sun for the reception one man had said could not be had.

I turned to go down the steps, and I saw something at the gate.

A white van had pulled up at the curb, half on the grass, engine still running. Even from the steps I could read the lettering on the side, in the same tidy script as the brochure with the ham on it.

Roone’s Catering.

The driver’s door was closed. The man behind the wheel had not gotten out.

I should say that nobody else had noticed. The yard was loud with talking and the clatter of plates and a child shouting for a roll. Only Dolores, at the foot of the steps with her thermos, was looking at me.

She followed my eyes. She saw the van.

“Well, now,” she said again.

“I don’t know what he wants.”

“Then go find out.”

“I’m not going to make a scene at my daughter’s wedding.”

“I didn’t say make one. You’ve spent two days praying for him, Verda. It would be rude not to see how it turned out.”

I walked down the church steps and across the grass. People moved aside for me, and I smiled at them, and I did not feel my feet.

At the gate the van’s window was down, and Roone sat very still with both hands on the steering wheel. He looked ten years older than he had on Thursday. His face, which had been a closed gate, was not closed anymore. It was the face of a man who had driven past a church a dozen times in two days and had not been able to keep going.

“Mrs. Weddle,” he said.

“Roone.”

He didn’t say anything else. I did not help him. I stood there in my good blue dress with my hands folded and let him sit with it.

“I heard,” he said at last. “My wife told me. Everyone told me. The whole town’s been talking since Thursday afternoon.” He swallowed. “I had a corporate booking this Saturday. Forty-four hundred dollars more than your contract. I told myself I’d say the money was the problem, because I couldn’t say I’d picked the bigger job. I made up the rush fee. There’s nothing in the contract about a rush fee.”

I did not speak.

“The corporate people canceled Friday,” he said, with a short ugly laugh. “Their office flooded. I sat in my kitchen last night with a walk-in full of ham and nowhere to send it, and I thought about that boy’s face, and I could not sleep.”

He reached to the passenger seat and picked up a white envelope. It was fat. It had my daughter’s name on the front, in a hand that was not tidy at all.

“I can’t make it right,” Roone said. “But I thought I could start by putting it back.”

I looked at the envelope. I looked at the man.