“I didn’t tell you,” Garold said. “I should have. I didn’t. I was a coward. I thought—I thought if I kept her calm, if I kept her happy, she’d leave you alone. She’d leave Paige alone. She’d only take it out on me.”
He looked at his son on the grass.
“I was wrong,” he said. “She never stopped. She just got better at hiding it.”
Then Garold looked at me.
In the mud.
“When Frank brought Nina home,” he said, “I watched Carol. The first night. At dinner. I watched her look at Nina’s hands. At the burns from the ovens.”
He looked at Carol.
“And I knew,” he said. “I knew what she was going to do. I’ve seen that look for thirty-six years.”
“I tried to stop it,” Garold said. “In my way. I told Carol to leave her alone. Every night. After every dinner. In our kitchen. Where nobody could see.”
He touched the newest bruise on his arm. Dark. Purple. From last week.
“Every time I said it,” he said, “Carol made me pay.”
He looked at the guests.
“Last Tuesday,” he said, “I told Carol I’d tell everyone. At the wedding. If she did anything to Nina.”
He held up his arm.
“She threw a cast iron skillet,” he said. “It hit my arm.”
“I didn’t think she’d do it,” Garold said. “In front of everybody. In front of a hundred people. With a photographer standing right there.”
He looked at Carol.
“I thought,” he said, “even you wouldn’t do that.”
Carol looked around.
At the guests.
At their faces.
Her friends from the Women’s Club. Barbara. Lorraine. Nancy. Standing together by the barn. Staring at her.
Her cousins. Frank’s cousins. The pastor from St. Joseph’s.
All of them.
Staring.
She took a step back.
Toward the path.
Toward the parking lot.
Toward her white Lexus.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m not staying here to be slandered. By a drunk old man and a—”
She looked at me.
“—a baker,” she said.
She turned around.
She started walking.
Nobody planned it.
Nobody said anything.
But the guests moved.
Barbara from the Women’s Club stepped onto the path. In front of her. In her yellow dress.
Nancy stepped next to her.
Then Lorraine.
Then Frank’s cousin Mike. Big. A firefighter in Sturgeon Bay.
Then my friend Sofia from the bakery.
Then the pastor from St. Joseph’s.
Then Paige.
They formed a line.
Across the narrow stone path.
Between Carol and the parking lot.
Nobody touched her.
Nobody said anything.
They just stood there.
Carol stopped.
She looked at them.
“Get out of my way,” she said.
Nobody moved.
“Get out of my way!” Carol screamed.
Barbara looked at her.
Barbara Haugen. Sixty-two. Carol’s best friend for thirty years. Vice president of the Sturgeon Bay Women’s Club.
“Carol,” Barbara said quietly. “I’ve known you since 1994. I’ve had dinner at your house a hundred times. I’ve sat next to Garold at every Christmas party.”
She looked at Garold’s arm.
“I always wondered,” Barbara said, “why he never rolled up his sleeves.”
She looked back at Carol.
“I’m not getting out of your way,” she said.
The guests surrounded her.
Not close. Not touching. Just a circle. On the path. In the garden. Behind the barn.
Carol stood in the middle of it. In her pale blue silk. Her white hat. Her clean satin heels.
Trapped.
Then somebody pulled out a phone.
It was Mike. Frank’s cousin. The firefighter.
He held it up.
“I’m calling the Door County Sheriff,” he said.
“For what?” Carol shrieked. “I slipped!”
“For assault,” Mike said. “On Nina. On camera.”
He looked at Garold’s arm.
“And then,” he said, “they can ask Uncle Garold about the rest.”
The sheriff’s deputies arrived fourteen minutes later.
Two of them. A man and a woman. In tan uniforms. With hats.
They walked into the garden.
They saw a bride on her knees in the mud.
They saw a hundred and twelve wedding guests standing in a circle.
They saw a blonde woman in pale blue silk standing in the middle of it.
They saw a big gray-haired man with his sleeve rolled up.
The female deputy looked at Garold’s arm.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then she looked at Carol.
“Ma’am,” she said. “I’m Deputy Halvorsen. I need you to come with me.”
They took Carol to the Door County Justice Center in Sturgeon Bay.
In the back of a patrol car.
In her pale blue silk and her white hat.
The guests watched her go.
Nobody said anything.
As the patrol car pulled out of the parking lot, Carol looked out the back window.
At the barn. At the garden. At the guests.
At me.
I was still on my knees in the mud.
I looked back at her.
I didn’t look away.
Then Garold knelt down next to me.
In the mud.
In his gray suit. His knees sinking into the black clay. He didn’t care.
He looked at me.
“Nina,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I whispered. “My dress is.”
“I know.”
“And my necklace,” I said. “My mother’s locket. It broke. It’s in the mud. Somewhere.”
Garold looked at the mud.
He looked at me.
Then he put his hands in it.
His big, scarred hands. Burned and broken and bruised. Into the black Wisconsin clay. Up to his wrists.
He started feeling around.
