She cried quietly. She did not wipe her face. “Mr. Caldwell, I am so sorry. I had no idea.” I waited until she could lift her cup. Then I told her two things. The first was that her wedding was going forward on Saturday, but not on my land. I had a neighbor named Ned Garrison, whose family had built a stone barn outside Versailles in 1873. Ned had a coffee pot going right now, this morning, and was waiting for her call. The barn was hers if she wanted it, free of charge.
The second was that on Saturday morning at seven a.m., I was going to drive a manure spreader onto my west field and apply two thousand gallons of liquid cattle manure, exactly as I had filed with the county on August 22nd. The Kentucky State Police were going to be present. They were also going to arrest her mother, her father, and a county clerk on charges of bribery, forgery, and conspiracy.
She read every word twice. She set the affidavit down. “Mr. Caldwell, thank you for telling me. I would have walked down that aisle thinking my mother had paid you. I would have shaken your hand in good faith. I want you to know I would have meant it.” “I know that, sweetheart.” “What’s your wife’s name?” “Margaret. Maggie.” “My mother told me her name was Susan. She told me Susan loved the gardenias.”
I did not say anything for a moment. Then, “Madison, your mother did not know my wife.” She nodded once, slowly. She stood up. She thanked me for the coffee. She took the slip of paper with Ned Garrison’s phone number on it. She walked out into the cool Bourbon County morning and called Ned from the parking lot.
By 8:45, she had a new venue. By 9:15, half the wedding party knew. By noon, the caterer had agreed to move. By three p.m., Madison’s father’s brother, a Versailles auctioneer who had not spoken to Doug in eleven years, had agreed to walk Madison down the aisle. Madison did not call her mother all day. Bridget Halloran did not yet know. That was the way I wanted it.
By Friday afternoon, every piece I needed was in place. Sheriff Earl Van Sant, a sixty-four-year-old former Marine who had grown up shooting jackrabbits behind my father’s barn, sat in my kitchen at one p.m. and drank a glass of buttermilk while I walked him through the schedule. Earl had been a pallbearer at Maggie’s funeral.
“Wyatt, I’ll be there at 6:45. Two deputies in cruisers, lights off. I will not engage Mrs. Halloran unless she physically obstructs you. I will not let anybody touch the tractor, and I will not let her private security guard within fifty feet of the field.” “What if she tries to file an injunction?” Earl smiled. “Son, the only Bourbon County judge who could issue one is at his grandson’s football game in Frankfort. The next one available is Monday. By Monday, the field will be fertilized, the wedding will be over, and Mrs. Halloran will be in custody.”