Chapter 5 - The Ceremony He Still Wanted
I stared at that message.
"He can't be serious," Renee said.
"He's serious," I said.
Across the table, Bethany had gone completely still. "Nicole came back?"
"I don't know." I was already texting Renee's contact. *Is Nicole there?*
The answer came inside a minute. *Yes. They're in a side room. Guests are still in their seats. Nobody's left.*
I set the phone down.
"He's going to talk her into it," Bethany said. Not a question. "He talked me into things for two years. He's good at it. You don't even notice it happening."
Renee looked at me. "What do you want to do?"
I didn't answer right away.
Half of me wanted to drive home. Sit with my kids. Let whatever happened in that barn happen without me in the room. I already had the folder. I already had the recordings. I already had enough to keep me and my children safe going forward.
But Nicole was sitting in a side room with Derek right now. My little sister. The one who'd betrayed me. The one my parents had ordered me to forgive and make space for, because she deserved happiness too.
She didn't know about the account. She didn't know about the recordings. She didn't know the man walking her back toward that altar had spent three months methodically threatening another woman with a baby.
I picked up my bag. "I'm going back."
Renee drove. I sat in the passenger seat with the folder on my knees and started rehearsing what I'd say, then made myself stop, because planning had never once worked on Derek. He adjusted too fast. You had to just walk in and put the thing on the table.
The guests were still seated when we came through the doors. The murmur died when they saw me.
A venue coordinator moved to head us off. "Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to—"
"My sister is in that room," I said. "I need two minutes with her."
"The ceremony's about to resume—"
"Then I need one."
She hesitated. Renee slid in beside her and started asking something about the chair count for the reception, and the coordinator turned to deal with it, and I walked past her toward the side hallway.
The door was open a few inches. I heard Derek before I got to it.
"—blew it way out of proportion, that's all it was. Bethany's a mistake I made and ended, and she couldn't take being ended. Today was her trying to do as much damage as possible on the one day it would hurt the most. That's who she is."
"She had a baby, Derek."
"She's claiming it's mine. I haven't confirmed anything."
"She had a letter. In your handwriting."
A pause. "Nicole. Look at me."
I pushed the door open.
Derek saw me first. Something crossed his face — not guilt, I'd stopped waiting for that years ago — just fast, cold math. Recalculating.
Nicole turned. Her eyes were swollen. The bouquet was gone. She'd taken the veil off and was folding it in her lap, smaller and smaller, into a tight little square.
"You shouldn't be here," Derek said.
"Probably not," I said. I looked at Nicole. "I need to show you something."
"Whatever she's got is fake—"
"Derek." I didn't raise my voice. "Stop."
Something about how I said it shut him up. Maybe thirteen years of me never using that tone. Maybe he just recognized that this time my hands weren't empty.
I opened the folder and held out the bank statements.
Nicole took them. Read the account name. Then the dates. Then the number at the bottom of the last page.
"Forty-three thousand dollars," I said. "Fourteen months. Opened under his mother's maiden name so it wouldn't show up anywhere you'd look."
Her hands stopped moving.
"And there's this." I took Renee's phone and pressed play.
Derek's voice filled that little room. "...I will make sure every person you know thinks you're a liar. I've got friends where you work. I know your landlord personally. Do not test me."
Nicole set the bank statements down on the table beside her. Carefully. The exact same way she'd set the bouquet down on that chair an hour ago — keeping her hands busy so the rest of her wouldn't come apart.
Derek moved toward me. "You had no right to go digging—"
"She has six more recordings," I said. "Her lawyer gets copies Monday."
He stopped. "Her lawyer," he repeated. It came out thinner than he meant it to.
Nicole looked up from the table. She looked at Derek for a long moment — long enough that the room went back to holding its breath, the way the whole hall had when Sophie stood at that mic. Then she looked at me.
"Did you know?" she asked. "Before today. About her."
"No," I said. "I knew about you. I didn't know about her."
She nodded. Once. Slow.
"Get out," she said.
Derek's head snapped around. "Nicole—"
"Get out of this room." Her voice didn't shake. "Get out of this building. Don't call me tonight. Don't call me tomorrow." She held the folded veil out toward him. "Take this with you."
He didn't move for a second. Then he took it.
He looked at me one more time on his way to the door. I held his eyes and didn't look away.
He walked out. His footsteps crossed the hall. The side exit opened and closed.
Nicole sat down hard in the nearest chair.
I stood in the doorway, not sure whether to stay or leave.
"How long did you live with it," she asked. "Knowing about me. Before you found out on the phone."
"I didn't," I said. "I didn't know anything until I heard him that day."
She was quiet.
"I lost the baby three weeks after that," I said. I hadn't planned to. It came out anyway.
Nicole put her face in her hands.
I stood there and let her.
After a while, into her palms, she said, "I'm sorry."
May you like
I didn't answer. I wasn't ready to answer that one yet.
But I stayed in the doorway until she was ready to stand up. Outside, I could hear the guests starting to leave.
