Chapter 10
I didn't go back to the reception because I wanted to. I went back because staying upstairs meant I had already said yes.
The bouquet was on the dresser where I'd left it. The white roses had started to turn. The edges of the petals were browning, and the baby's breath looked dry and brittle. I picked it up with both hands. My shoe was still by the door where the photographer had set it after he'd carried it up from the rug. One shoe. The other one I'd kicked off downstairs in the ballroom when my feet started to hurt.
I carried both down the back staircase. I could hear the band through the wall, playing something bright and generic. The hallway to the ballroom smelled like coffee and hot butter.
The bridesmaid who'd been in the doorway was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Jenna. She hadn't changed out of her dusty blue dress.
"You sure?" she asked.
I nodded. My veil was still pinned in. I hadn't fixed my makeup.
She didn't try to take the flowers from me. She just fell in step beside me and pushed the service door open.
The ballroom was full. Two hundred people at round tables, string lights, the head table up on a low riser against the far wall. My groom was standing at the head table with a drink in his hand, laughing at something his father was saying. He saw me in the doorway and his smile stayed in place. His eyes didn't.
The older woman — his mother — was seated to his left in that burgundy lace dress, pearls catching the light. She saw the bouquet in my hands and her mouth tightened.
I walked straight down the center aisle between the tables. I felt every chair scrape as people turned to look. I didn't look at anyone except the empty space in the middle of the head table, where the seating card with our names had been propped against a vase.
Jenna stayed a half step behind me.
When I reached the head table I set the shoe down first. White high heel on the white tablecloth, on its side, the strap twisted. Then I set the bouquet right next to it, in the center where the centerpiece should have been. The roses were wilted and the stems were bound with the same ribbon I'd tied that morning. Some of the baby's breath shook loose onto the linen.
The room got quiet in that way rooms do when something wrong is happening and no one wants to be first to name it.
My groom set his drink down too hard. I saw his jaw work. He took a step toward me, then stopped himself. He glanced at the tables closest to the riser, at the county-club crowd, at the older couples with their phones out.
"What is this?" he asked, quiet enough that only the head table heard. His voice was tight, controlled. He tried to smile. "Honey, what are you doing?"
I didn't answer. I kept my hands on the edge of the table to keep them from shaking.
His mother stood halfway, hand on the table. "Sweetheart, let's not do this here," she said to me, her voice low and even, meant to sound kind. "Let's step outside and talk."
I shook my head.
Jenna moved up beside me then. She looked at the shoe, at the bouquet, at my bare feet under the dress, and I saw her understand exactly what I was doing.
She didn't whisper. She asked it clear and loud, loud enough that the two tables in front of the riser and the waitstaff by the bar could hear it.
"Do you need help right now?" she asked me. "Do you want me to stay with you? Do you want me to call someone?"
The questions hung there. No one at the nearby tables pretended not to hear them this time. A woman in a navy dress lowered her phone. A man at the next table stopped chewing.
My groom's face flushed red. His hands curled into fists at his sides, then opened again. He wanted to grab the bouquet, to sweep the shoe off the table and laugh it off. I could see him calculating it — how it would look if he touched me here, in front of everyone. He forced his hands flat on the table instead, leaning in.
"You're making a scene," he said through his teeth, still smiling for the crowd. "Pick it up."
May you like
I didn't pick it up. I stepped back, just enough that there was space between us, and kept my hand on Jenna's arm. The bouquet stayed where it was, ugly and wilted in the middle of all that white linen and crystal. The single shoe beside it said everything I hadn't been allowed to say upstairs.
For the first time since I'd hit the rug in that bedroom, the silence in the room wasn't mine to carry alone.
