Chương 3
Her mother inhaled sharply.
“My face hit the edge.”
Emily touched the swollen skin beneath her eye.
“That’s where this came from.”
“Did you lose consciousness?” Diane asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It happened fast.”
“Were you dizzy?”
“A little.”
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
Diane stood.
“We’re going to a hospital.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
“The wedding—”
“There is no wedding.”
The sentence sat between them.
Emily looked down at the white dress.
For the first time all day, she understood that.
Not postponed.
Not delayed.
Not salvaged.
There was no wedding.
Her stomach turned.
Robert watched her face.
“Em.”
“I know.”
“No, sweetheart—”
“Please don’t.”
He stopped.
Emily stood and walked to the window.
Below, Marcus and Ethan were near the far edge of the courtyard. Ethan had removed his white tuxedo jacket. He was talking with both hands, fast and sharp.
Marcus mostly listened.
A woman in a black headset hurried across the lawn carrying a clipboard.
Emily almost laughed again.
Somewhere, somebody was still trying to solve the schedule.
Her mother came to stand beside her.
“Why didn’t you call us last night?”
Emily did not answer.
Diane waited.
Finally Emily said, “Because I thought I could fix my face.”
Her mother stared at her.
Emily’s throat tightened.
“That sounds insane when I say it out loud.”
“No,” Diane said. “It sounds like you were scared.”
“I wasn’t scared.”
The lie came automatically.
Emily heard it.
So did her mother.
She looked down at the courtyard.
“I was scared of what happened next.”
Robert remained behind them.
“What does that mean?”
“It means if I told you, the wedding was over.”
“Yes.”
“And if the wedding was over, I had to explain why.”
“You didn’t owe anybody an explanation.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it yesterday.”
Emily turned.
“No, Dad. I knew you would say it. That’s different.”
Robert opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
She looked at both of them.
“I spent two years telling everyone you were wrong about him.”
Her father flinched.
“I told you that you were controlling. I told Mom you were judging him because he didn’t come from money. I stopped telling you things because every time you asked a question, I heard criticism.”
Robert looked down.
“And then last night he hit me, and the first thing I thought wasn’t, Ethan hit me.”
Emily’s voice broke.
“The first thing I thought was, Dad was right.”
Robert stood again.
This time he did not move toward the door.
He came to her.
“Emily.”
“I hated you for being right.”
“I would give anything to be wrong.”
That was when she cried.
Not dramatically.
No collapse.
Her face simply folded against her father’s shirt, and the first sob hurt the bruised side of her face so badly that she pulled away and laughed through it.
“God, that hurts.”
Robert’s eyes filled.
“Hospital.”
“Yes.”
Diane was already reaching for her purse.
Emily changed out of the wedding gown.
That took longer than expected.
The zipper stuck.
Her mother’s fingers shook too badly to work the clasp, so the makeup artist, Tessa, came upstairs to help. Tessa did not ask what happened. She took one look at Emily’s face after the concealer had been wiped away and quietly found a loose cream-colored blouse from Emily’s overnight bag.
When the gown finally slid down, Emily stepped out of it.
She stared at the dress pooled on the floor.
Nine months earlier, she had cried when she found it.
Now she wanted somebody to get it out of the room.
“Can you put that somewhere?”
Tessa lifted it carefully.
“Of course.”
“Anywhere I can’t see it.”
Tessa nodded.
Then she carried the dress into the adjoining closet and shut the door.
Emily put on jeans.
Her mother found sneakers.
Robert took off his tuxedo jacket and loosened his collar.
They left through a side entrance to avoid the arriving guests.
It did not work.
Three cars were already pulling into the circular drive. Emily’s cousin waved through a windshield, then lowered her hand when she saw Emily’s face.
Robert put himself between Emily and the car without being asked.
She almost told him not to.
Then she let him.
At the emergency department, the receptionist asked Emily for her marital status.
“Single,” Emily said.
The word felt enormous.
The receptionist kept typing.
“Any possibility you could be pregnant?”
“No.”
“Any allergies?”
“Penicillin.”
“Do you feel safe returning home?”
Emily hesitated.
Robert shifted beside her.
The receptionist looked only at Emily.
“Do you feel safe returning home?”
“My apartment?”
“Yes.”
Emily thought of Ethan’s key.
“No.”
The receptionist stopped typing.
“Okay.”
It was the first practical consequence.
Not the broken wedding.
Not the guests.
Not the photographs.
A key.
Ethan could enter her home.
The nurse who examined her asked Robert and Diane to wait outside.
Robert objected.
Emily said, “Dad.”
He left.
The nurse’s name was Carla. She had purple glasses and a tiny coffee stain near the pocket of her scrub top.
She asked questions in a calm voice.
Had Ethan hit her before?
“No.”
Had he ever pushed her?
Emily paused.
“Once.”
Carla waited.
“Not like last night.”
“What does that mean?”
“We were arguing. He moved me out of the way.”
“How?”
“His hands were on my shoulders.”
“Did you want him to touch you?”
“No.”
“Any other times?”
Emily stared at the wall.
There had been the night in Miami when he had squeezed her wrist under a restaurant table because she interrupted him.
There had been the argument in the parking garage when he had punched the roof of her car.
There had been the broken bathroom cabinet at his condo.
There had been the time he blocked a doorway for almost twenty minutes because she wanted to leave.
None of those had been hitting.
That was how she had categorized them.
“No,” she said.
May you like
Carla did not challenge her.
The doctor ordered imaging because of the headache and uncertainty about whether Emily had briefly lost consciousness. There was no fracture. No intracranial bleeding. The cut needed cleaning but not stitches.
