Chapter 7 - The Lobby Lights Were Too Bright for a Wedding Dress
I left the suitcase by the doorway where it had been all night and I didn't look at the dresser again. The ring was still there on the dark wood. I knew that without checking, the way you know a tooth is gone with your tongue.
My veil was off. I'd folded it over the back of the chair in the suite because I couldn't think with that lace around my face. The gown stayed on because there wasn't anything else. No coat. No bag I'd packed for myself. My phone was in my left hand and the valet ticket Daniel had left in his jacket pocket was in my right, the edge damp from where I'd been holding it.
The hallway was empty and too warm. My sleeves itched at the wrists. The lace at my neck, high and tight all day, suddenly felt like it was choking me, and I pulled at it once with my fingers before I made myself stop.
I hit the elevator button and waited. The carpet had a pattern that blurred if I stared at it. When the doors opened, a couple in their fifties was already inside with ice in a bucket. The woman looked at my dress, then at my face, then down fast at her husband's shoes. He stared straight ahead at the numbers like his life depended on it.
Nobody said congratulations. The doors closed and we went down in that humming quiet. I watched the floor lights change. My breathing sounded too loud inside the lace. I tried to slow it. Inhale through my nose. Let my shoulders drop. The woman shifted the ice bucket from one hand to the other. When we stopped at the lobby, they let me get off first and I could feel them waiting to exhale until I was gone.
The lobby at night was all hard light and low sound. A few lamps glowed amber around the seating area, but the front desk had that white-blue overhead that made everything look washed out. My dress looked too white under it. Too bright. A guy asleep on one of the couches with his jacket over his face. Vending machine humming by the restrooms.
The night clerk was young, early twenties, hair pulled into a low ponytail, name tag that said MORGAN. She looked up from her computer when my heels hit the tile. She stared. I mean she really stared, mouth a little open, eyes going from my gown to my bare hands to my face. Then she caught herself and looked back at her screen.
"Hi," I said. My voice came out rough.
"Hi," she said. She didn't ask if I needed help. She just waited.
I walked up to the counter. The marble was cold under my palms when I set them down. I didn't know what to do with the valet ticket, so I set that down too and smoothed it flat.
"My husband just left," I said. "Daniel. Black suit. Short dark hair. He would've come through here maybe twenty minutes ago."
Morgan glanced at the ticket, then at me. "I didn't — I was in the back," she said. "Let me check with valet."
She picked up the phone and turned half away. I could hear her voice low. "Hey, wedding guy? Yeah. Which way?" A pause. "Okay. Taxi or his car?" Another pause. She wrote something on a sticky note.
She hung up and slid the note toward me like she didn't want to say it out loud. On it in blue ink: County hospital - taxi south on 9.
"He didn't take his car?" I asked.
She shook her head. "Valet said he waved off his car and took a taxi out front. Said county hospital to the driver."
Not the airport. I don't know why that mattered so much, but my knees loosened a little. County hospital was twelve minutes south on Route 9, past the diner and the gas station. I'd driven it with my mom last spring.
"Did he say anything else?" I asked. "Did he mention anyone? Emily?"
Morgan's face didn't change, but her eyes flicked down. "Valet didn't hear that part. Just the hospital."
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I nodded. I folded the sticky note in half and then in half again and put it in my palm with my phone. The lobby doors were glass and beyond them the night was black with the porte-cochere lights making circles on the wet pavement. A taxi wasn't there anymore. Just an empty curb and the night air pressing on the glass.
I stood there in my wedding dress under those bright lights with nowhere private to go, knowing which direction he'd gone.
