Part 2
Theo watched her move toward the bedside table.
“Elena, please,” he said. “Let me explain.”
The woman beside him turned her face away.
Elena picked up her black phone.
For a moment, the screen reflected only the dark curve of her hair beneath the veil and the white lace of her sleeve. Her hand did not shake until she unlocked it.
Theo leaned forward beneath the duvet. “Don’t do this.”
She looked over her shoulder.
“Don’t do what?”
He swallowed. His light stubble made his jaw look more tense than it usually did. “Call anyone. Don’t make this public before we talk.”
The room seemed to narrow around that word.
Public.
Elena held the bouquet in one hand and the phone in the other. It occurred to her that the groom had not asked her to forgive him. Not yet. He had asked her to protect him from being seen.
It was the first clear thought she had managed since opening the door.
The other woman whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Elena looked at her.
The woman’s shoulders were bare above the sheet, but there was nothing erotic in the sight of her. She looked cold. Ashamed. Young, though Elena guessed they were close in age. Her long hair was tangled across one cheek. A thin gold necklace rested at the base of her throat.
Elena did not recognize it.
That fact felt absurdly important.
She had attended enough dinners and engagement parties and Bennett family gatherings to recognize jewelry. She knew which aunt always wore emerald earrings. She knew Theo’s mother preferred pearls, even when no one else did. She knew the family’s old friends by the perfumes they wore and the way they made room for each other near a bar.
This woman did not belong to any of those memories.
Or perhaps she did, and Elena had simply never been looking.
Theo’s voice broke into her thoughts.
“Please. Put the phone down.”
Elena opened her contacts.
She did not need to search. The name was near the top.
Miss. Bennet.
Under it, in smaller letters, was the label Elena had saved months ago: Mother-in-Law.
The label struck her with such force that her throat tightened.
They were not family yet.
The ceremony had not happened.
The vows had not been spoken. No rings had been exchanged. No photograph had been taken of Theo lifting her veil. There was still time, technically, for her to walk away without needing to disentangle her name from his.
She should have felt lucky.
Instead, the thought made her want to sit down on the floor and cry until no one could find her.
The phone began to ring.
Theo closed his eyes.
The woman on the bed took one hand from the sheet and pressed it over her mouth.
Elena raised the phone to her left ear.
“Hello?” Miss. Bennet said.
Her voice was calm, slightly breathless, as though she had been walking through the hotel hallway. Elena imagined her outside the suite with the other relatives, checking the time, wondering why the bride had disappeared before the ceremony.
Elena pressed her bouquet against her waist.
“Miss. Bennet,” she said, “you need to come here right now.”
There was a pause.
“Elena? What happened?”
Elena looked at Theo.
His eyes were on her now. Desperate. Wide. He was shaking his head just slightly.
She had once loved that face.
She had loved it when he looked at her from across crowded rooms, signaling that he wanted to leave. She had loved it when he looked at her on the beach after proposing, as though she had given him an answer he still could not believe he deserved. She had loved it on ordinary mornings, when he came into the kitchen with his hair still damp and asked whether she had made coffee.
That was the worst thing about betrayal. It did not erase the life before it. It poisoned it.
“Please bring everyone,” Elena said.
She heard Miss. Bennet inhale.
“Elena,” the older woman said carefully, “what is going on?”
Elena’s mouth tightened.
“You need to see what your son did.”
She ended the call.
For one second, the room was silent again.
Then Theo spoke so quickly that the words tangled.
“Why would you do that?”
Elena turned toward him.
His face changed as he realized what he had said.
The question did not make her angry in the way he seemed to expect. It made something inside her become still.
Why would you do that?
May you like
Why would she call the people who had raised him? Why would she refuse to hide his betrayal? Why would she let the room become exactly as shameful as he had made it?
Elena looked at the bed, at his bare shoulders above the white sheets, at the other woman pulling the duvet closer around herself.
