The Uninvited Groom

The wedding in Littleford was the sort of event that set the whole hamlet buzzing. John Whitaker, the villages most prized mechanichands like gold, mind like a clockhad taken Mabel Hartley as his bride. Mabel was a flash of poppy red, brightvoiced, her laugh a tinkling bell. She stood at the centre of every gathering, always the first to step forward. The pictureperfect pair seemed to have walked straight out of an illustration. Johns parents built them a new house, raised a fresh fence, and draped ribbons over the gate. For three days the celebration roaredmusic spilling into every lane, the scent of barbecued meat and sweet pies hanging in the air, and the crowd shouting Bitter! as the tradition went.

I wasnt at the feast. I was stationed in the little clinic at the far end of the lane, sitting opposite a quiet girl named Ethel Morgan. Ethel was the sort of invisible presence that somehow managed to be everywhere at once. Her eyes were deep forest lakes, calm yet carrying a sorrow as old as the hills, the kind that bruises the soul just to look into. She sat upright on the examination couch, hands folded delicately on her knees until the knuckles went white. She wore her best dressa creamcoloured muslin patterned with tiny blue forgetmenot blossoms, old but freshly pressed, with a skyblue ribbon tucked into her hair. She had been planning her own wedding, tooher own to John.

John and Ethel had been inseparable since primary school, sharing a desk, swapping books, and shielding each other from the other boys rough play. He carried her satchel; she delivered him fresh scones; everyone in Littleford knew them as the pair that were as natural as sky and earth, sun and moon. When John returned from his service, the first thing he did was run to her. They filed a notice, set a datethe very same day Mabel and John were to marry.

Then Mabel came back to the village from the city, visiting for a few days. Something shifted in Johns mind, a sudden, inexplicable impulse. He began to avoid Ethel, darting his eyes away whenever she entered the room. One evening, long after dusk had settled, he lingered by the gate, his hat trembling in his hands, and forced out the words that felt like prying a nail from rotting wood: Forgive me, Ethel. I dont love you. I love Mabel. I will marry her.

He turned and walked away, leaving Ethel standing at the gate, the cold wind rattling her scarf, her eyes vacant. The village murmured, then moved on; strangers grief, after all, usually fades. Yet here she was, before me, on the day her own wedding never came to be, while outside the celebratory clamor and drunken laughter roared on. I watched her, feeling my own heart pound with a raw, unseen ache. She did not weep; not a single tear fell, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. When a person screams, the pain is visible. When they sit like a stone, the hurt remains inside, eating them from within.

Ethel, I whispered gently, perhaps a little water? Or some valerian drops?

She lifted those lakedeep eyes to meet mine, and all I saw was a barren plain, scorched by fire.

No, Mrs. Sampson, she said, voice as soft as dry leaves rustling. Im not here for medicine. I just need to sit. The walls at home are crushing. My mother is weeping, and I I feel nothing.

Silence settled between us. What words could ever stitch that empty wound? There were none. Only time, and even then it merely dulls the ache, covering it with a thin veil that, if brushed, bleeds again.

We sat like that for what felt like an hour, perhaps two. Night fell outside, music faded, and the only sounds were the ticking of my old wall clock and the wind howling through the chimney. Suddenly Ethel shivered, as if a chill had run through her bones, and fixed her gaze on a point ahead.

I sewed his wedding shirt, she murmured, a simple crossstitch at the collar. I thought hed wear it as a talisman.

She waved her hand through the air, as if smoothing an invisible collar, and a single, reluctant tear traced a slow, heavy line down her cheek, heavy as melted tin. It fell onto my hand, and for a split second the ticking stopped. The whole village, the entire world, seemed to hold its breath with that teara bitter, unvoiced grief. My soul sank to my heels, I swear. I wrapped my arms around her trembling shoulders and held her, cradling her like a child, while thinking, Lord, why this? Why such a bright, gentle soul must endure this?

Two years slipped by. Snow turned to mud, mud to dust, dust back to snow. Life in Littleford trudged on. John and Mabel seemed, at a glance, to be doing well. They bought a car, their house was full. Yet Mabels laughter had changed; it no longer rang like a bell but cracked like broken glasssharp, angry. John moved as if he were wading through water, his skin darkened, his shoulders hunched, a perpetual gloom in his eyes. He spent longer evenings in the garage, not emptyhanded, but with a grim determination. Gossip swirled that Mabel nagged him from dawn till duskabout money, attention, even the neighbours garden. Their love, once a spring flood, had surged, demolished everything, and then receded, leaving only debris and silt.

Ethel survived, quietly. She worked at the post office, helped her mother with the household, retreated into herself like a shell. She never went to dances, never flirted. A smile flickered now and then, but the forestdeep silence in her eyes remained. I watched her from a distance, my heart aching, fearing she would wilt forever.

One late autumn afternoon, rain pelting down like a bucket, the wind stripping the last golden leaves from the birches, the gate of my little clinic creaked. John Whitfordno, Whitakerstood there, drenched, mud caked on his boots, his hand hanging unnaturally.

Mrs. Sampson, he rasped, lips trembling, help me. I think Ive broken my arm.

I led him inside. While I cleaned the wound and set a splint, he winced in pain, his face a mask of misery. When I finished, he lifted his eyes to mine, and in them I saw a well of desperation.

Its me, he breathed, Im angry. Mabel and I fought. She left for the city, to her mothers. She said shed never come back.

He sobbed, not the rough, masculine roar of a man, but a quiet, soundless plea. Tears streamed down his unshaven cheeks, landing on his dirty coat. The robust farmer sat before me like a beaten dog. He babbled about how life had turned upside down, how Mabels beauty had become a cruel demand, her love a suffocating weight.

I see Ethel in my dreams every night, he whispered, voice ragged. She smiles, and I wake screaming. Foolish, blind fool. I tossed away the most precious thing Id ever had for a glittering wrapper.

I gave him a glass of tonic, sat beside him, and listened. Life, I thought, sometimes forces us to lose everything to reveal what truly mattered.

The next day the whole village buzzed: John was getting a divorce. A week later he stood at Ethels cottage, not at the gate like that dreadful night, but on the porch, rain lashing his hat from his head, drenched to the bone. He stared at her windows for an hour, two, his clothes soaked through. Ethels mother peered out, waving her arms, but he remained rooted.

Then the gate swung open. Ethel emerged in an old coat, a scarf wrapped around her head. She stepped toward him. He fell to his knees in the mud, seized her hands, and pressed his face to hers.

Forgive me, he managed, the only words he could summon.

What was said after that I never heard, and it mattered little. What mattered was the look in Ethels eyes when, a few days later, she came to me for a plaster for Johns bruised arm. The barren plain had vanished; the forest lakes shimmered again, and in the deepest corner of those eyes a timid spark flickered like the first crocus pushing through snow.

They never held a grand wedding. They simply lived. John moved into her modest cottage, repaired the roof, mended the fence, hefted the old stove. He laboured from dawn till dusk, as if his toil could atone for his sins. Ethel thawed, like a flower finally given water after a long drought. Her smile returnedbright, warmmaking anyone near her want to smile too.

One summer, at the height of the haycut, the air thick with the sweet scent of freshly mown grass and wildflowers, I walked past their home. The gate stood ajar. Inside, on a weathered wooden bench, John sat, strong and steady, his arm around Ethels shoulders. She leaned into him, humming softly while sorting sunkissed strawberries in a bowl. At their feet, in a woven basket on the warm boards, a tiny bundle slept their son, Sam.

The sun sank behind the river, painting the sky in soft watercolor hues. Somewhere a cow lowed, a dog barked, but on that porch a profound peace settled, as if time itself had paused. I watched them, tears of a different sort welling upclear, bright tears. And I smiled through them, knowing that even the deepest wounds can, with patience, grow into something gentle and beautiful.