Chapter 4: The Side Suite
He didn't put me down.
My dad kept one hand under me and one on my back, and he walked away from the ballroom doors the coordinator had just pulled shut. The music on the other side got muffled all at once. I could hear his breathing close to my ear and the soft sound of his shoes on the marble. He didn't ask Lauren to follow, but I felt her behind us. Her dress made a quiet brush against the floor.
The hallway got narrower and then turned. The cream walls looked the same as the ballroom, but the light was lower here, just wall sconces every few feet. At the end there was a single door with a brass handle, not the big double doors. A little paper sign taped at eye level said Dressing Suite B in curly script.
My dad tried the handle with his right hand while he held me with his left. It turned. It wasn't locked.
He pushed it open slowly.
The room was small. Cream walls again, a tall mirror on one side, a vanity with bulbs, and a folding chair tipped slightly against the baseboard. The marble floor in there was the same as the hall, polished to a shine, and I could see two kinds of marks near the wall. One was a dark scuff where a chair leg had dragged. The other was a thinner, paler line, like something heavy had been pulled across the floor and left a faint scratch.
I stared at that line. My cheek was still wet against his shirt.
On the floor near the vanity was an empty juice box on its side, the straw bent. Next to it was my pink cardigan, the one my mom had packed that morning. It was crumpled, one sleeve inside out. No one else was in the room.
"Where's Jenna?" my dad said. His voice was low. He wasn't talking to me.
Lauren stepped into the doorway but didn't come all the way in. She kept one hand on the door frame. I could see her lace gown and the way she held herself still.
"She was right here," she said. "I told her to keep the door closed."
My dad shifted me a little higher on his shoulder. He looked down at the juice box and the cardigan, then at the drag marks.
"Closed?" he said.
Lauren swallowed. I watched her eyes move from the marks to the empty chair.
"I asked her to keep it closed so Ellie wouldn't wander during the vows," she said. "It was supposed to be quiet. Just for the ceremony. I didn't want her coming out in the middle of everything. You know how she gets."
She said it like it was reasonable, like it was a plan. Her voice stayed even, but she spoke fast at the end.
My dad didn't answer right away. He carried me two steps further into the room and crouched enough to nudge my cardigan with his shoe without putting me down. He didn't pick it up. He looked at the chair again, at how it was pressed against the wall under the handle, and at the scratch that started right there and ran a foot toward the center of the room before it stopped.
That was where the chain would have been, I think now, though I didn't understand it then. I just knew the line on the floor matched the shape of something heavy.
My dad stood again. His jaw tightened.
"Did you tell her to use that chain?" he said.
Lauren's hand dropped from the door frame to her side. She shook her head once, quick.
"No," she said. "That was by the doors for the display. I just told her to keep Ellie in here until we were done. I didn't tell her how."
The word how hung there. Outside in the hallway, I could hear faint voices from the ballroom through the closed doors, and a chair scraping somewhere. No one came down this hall.
My dad looked at the empty room one more time, at the juice box and the cardigan on the floor, at the marks, at the open door that should have had someone behind it. Jenna wasn't there. Her bag wasn't there. The chair wasn't where it should have been.
May you like
He turned us both around and walked back out into the hall, away from the little suite. Lauren followed a half step behind. He didn't go back toward the ballroom. He stopped in that side hallway where the light was dimmer and held me a little tighter, like he was trying to decide what the room meant.
The door to Suite B stayed open behind us.
