Chapter 10
The ballroom doors were heavier when no one was pushing from the other side.
I had to lean into the right one with my shoulder. The lights were still on. All that warm fairy light strung above the flower arch, the candles on the tables still burning low. The chairs were empty now, napkins folded, glasses half-full and left where people had stood up too fast. It smelled like peonies and melted wax.
I didn't go to the center right away. I stood just inside the doorway and let the room settle around me. My heels made no sound on the carpet runner. The string lights hummed a little. Somewhere a heater clicked.
The box was still on the gift table by the arch.
From the door it looked small. Dark wood against the white linen, lid open, just as I'd left it. I walked toward it slowly, past the rows of chairs. My gown brushed the chair legs. The veil caught on a chair back and I had to stop and ease it free with two fingers.
When I got to the table I didn't touch it at first. I just looked down.
The cream card was still inside, propped against the velvet lining. Substitute Bride, in that looping script. The diamond was there too, square and too bright under the fairy lights. It threw a sharp little square of light onto the wood. My ring. The one I'd slid off an hour earlier and held above this same box, my hand shaking just enough that I'd had to pause.
I could hear my breathing again, the way I had in the car.
I picked up the box with both hands. It was heavier than I remembered, solid. The velvet inside was indented where the ring had sat for maybe twenty minutes, then again where it sat now. I tilted it a little and the light moved across the stone.
A voice behind me said, "Ms. Aragon?"
I turned. It was one of the catering leads, a woman in black with a headset pushed up on her hair. She held a stack of folded tablecloths against her hip.
"I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "Managers said you might come back in. Do you need us to clear this table?"
I shook my head. "Leave it for now. Leave the lights."
"Of course." She glanced at the box in my hands, then quickly away. "We'll be out in the kitchen if you need anything."
She left through the side service door and it swung shut softly behind her.
I turned back to the box. I took the card out first.
The paper was thick, expensive. The edges were a little soft where someone had handled it. Substitute Bride. I ran my thumb over the words. I thought about Bianca's hands holding this, Rafael's handwriting maybe, or hers. I thought about the game they'd planned, five minutes before I was supposed to walk. I didn't feel a sharp spike anymore, not like earlier. It was lower, heavier.
I set the card back down carefully, exactly where it had been.
Then I looked at the ring.
It sat in the center of the velvet. Large, square, clean. When Rafael had given it to me, we'd been on the balcony of my father's house in Tagaytay, and he'd been so nervous he'd dropped the box. I'd laughed and then cried and said yes before he even finished. I'd worn it every day since. Washed my hands with it on. Slept with it on.
I lifted it between my thumb and forefinger. Cool metal. The band still held a little warmth from the velvet, but not from my skin. Not anymore.
I held it up to the light. The stone caught the fairy lights and broke them into pieces. For a second I felt the old reflex to slip it back on, to make my hand look right again. To make the picture right.
I didn't.
I lowered my hand and held the ring over the box without dropping it. My fingers were steady this time. I could see my own knuckle, the faint pale line where the ring had been. The pearl waistband of my gown pressed against the table edge.
"Not tonight," I said quietly, to no one.
I placed the ring back into the velvet, not tossed, set down. It clicked softly against the wood. I closed the lid. The clasp was a small brass hook, and it caught with a neat little snap that sounded loud in the empty room.
With the lid closed the box looked like what it was: a small, dark, ordinary box. Not a game anymore. Evidence, maybe. A marker.
I tucked it against my ribs with one arm, my palm flat over the lid. My other hand lifted the edge of my veil so it wouldn't drag. I walked back down the carpet runner toward the doors, past the empty chairs and the still-burning candles.
May you like
At the doorway I looked back once. The flower arch was still up, the lights still warm, but the room was empty and it was mine again. The ballroom I had booked, paid for, chosen. Not theirs.
I pushed the door open with my hip and carried the box with me into the hall, back toward the suite. I wasn't wearing the ring. I wasn't throwing it away either. It was in my hands, where I could decide what it meant.
