A Groom wirh a View

the one before or the one after?“
    “I didn’t dial anyone. I sent the engagement photo and typed up the information to mail. I couldn’t have accidentally addressed it to a paper I had no intention of notifying.“
    “Okay, wait here.”
    A few moments later, he was back. “I told Smith about the call. He wants you to come in the room in about five minutes and convey the phone message to Kitty. No questions. No elaboration. Just tell her what the person on the phone said.”
    Shelley grabbed Jane’s arm and said, “You’re not going in there without me.”
    They waited the required five minutes. Jane had made a copy of the information she’d written down. She knocked on the door and they entered without waiting for permission. Jane handed Kitty the copy. “This person called for you, Kitty.”
    Kitty only glanced at the note. “Who is this?“
    “The society editor of your local newspaper. She wanted to be sure she had your name and Dwayne’s spelling right in your wedding announcement.”
    Kitty looked at her blankly. “I don’t understand.“
    “Someone called in and gave her the wording for an announcement that you and Dwayne had gotten married this weekend.“
    “You’ve made some mistake. Or they did when you called.“
    “I never contacted them,“ Jane said.
    “Who did?“ Kitty asked.
    At this point, John Smith interrupted. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they record those calls, just to be able to review the information when they write it up. Maybe I should ask for a dupe...”
    Kitty looked stricken.
    “Do you have something else to tell us?“ Smith asked calmly.
    Kitty slumped and put her hands to her face, sobbing. Nobody spoke. They waited impatiently for her to pull herself together. Finally she raised her head and said, shakily, “Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you the truth. Dwayne and I were in love. We were going to get married. But neither of us had much money and we wanted a house and children and—well, we came up with a plan.“
    “When?“ Smith asked.
    “A year ago. I introduced him to Livvy. He pretended to be crazy about her. See, I’d overheard her father harping on her about how it was time to get married and give him grandchildren. We thought—Dwayne and I—that if he managed to get engaged to her, her father would pay him off to get lost. Jack Thatcher is such a damned snob. And Jack did try to get rid of Dwayne, but wouldn’t pay enough.”
    Jane and Shelley exchanged astonished looks, but kept quiet.
    “Dwayne said when it came closer to the wedding, he knew Thatcher would get desperate enough to up the ante.“
    “And he didn’t?“ Smith asked calmly.
    “No, not enough. So Dwayne and I talked it over last night and decided he’d better go through with the wedding, and then he could divorce her and get a big settlement out of the family.“
    “There wasn’t a prenuptial agreement?“ Gus Ambler snapped. Jane hadn’t even noticed him sitting in the far corner of the room until he spoke.
    Kitty shook her head. “No, Jack wanted one, but Dwayne refused to sign it. He knew they’d cut him off with nothing if he signed anything. That’s why he thought up to the very end that Jack would put a stop to the wedding. Then we were going to take the money and get married right away. We’d had our blood tests and the marriage license and everything.”
    She paused. They were all silent in the face of this confession.
    “I know it wasn’t nice,“ Kitty said, sniffling again. “But we were so desperately in love and so poor. And Livvy didn’t really care anything about him. Jane, you heard her. Just before she went down the stairs, she tried to back out of the wedding and her father wouldn’t let her. She didn’t love him at all and he didn’t care anything about her. He was in love with me. It was the only way we could get married and have a house and children. I know you all must think we were awful, but it was the only thing we could do. We had to.”
    She looked around for sympathy or understanding and found nothing but perfectly blank expressions.
    “I didn’t think Livvy would care,“ Kitty went on. “She didn’t want to marry him. You know that, Jane. You heard her say so. Eden heard it, so did the musicians, I imagine. But Dwayne must have told her sometime during the reception dinner that he wanted a divorce right away and was leaving with me. All that prissy repression must have burst the dam. She was furious at being made a fool