Chapter 10: The Song He Remembered Too Late

Two weeks after the wedding that never happened, a package arrived at Belladonna addressed to me.

No return name.

I knew what it was before I opened it.

The ring box sat inside layers of tissue paper.

My engagement ring.

I had left it on the windowsill in the furnished apartment after speaking to Lachlan, then mailed it back to his Manhattan address the next morning.

Now it had returned.

There was a note.

“Zinnia, I know you don’t want contact. I’m not sending this because I expect you to wear it. I bought it for you, so I thought it should remain yours. If you don’t want it, sell it, throw it away, donate it. I won’t send it again. —L”

I read the note twice.

Then I closed the box.

Six months earlier, I would have interpreted that gesture as romantic.

Two weeks earlier, I might have interpreted it as manipulation.

Now I wasn’t sure.

That uncertainty itself felt like progress.

I didn’t need every action Lachlan took to mean something about me.

I placed the box in my desk drawer and returned to work.

Belladonna was preparing for its first major Boston bridal showcase.

Elena had assigned me responsibility for backstage scheduling.

Thirty-two models. Eight stylists. Four makeup artists. Two product sponsors. One runway.

And approximately nine hundred ways for the day to collapse.

I was delighted.

“You’re smiling at a spreadsheet,” Elena said.

“It’s a good spreadsheet.”

“That sentence should worry me.”

I grinned.

A month ago, Lachlan would have teased me for caring too much about details.

Cleo would have called me boring.

Here, details were why people trusted me.

The showcase was also where I met Julian Reyes.

He arrived carrying three garment bags and arguing with someone through an earpiece.

“No, if the zipper is pulling, don’t force it. Put her in look twelve and bring look nine to alterations.”

He ended the call, looked at me, and said, “Please tell me you’re Zinnia.”

I hesitated.

“That depends.”

“On whether I’m bringing a problem?”

“Yes.”

He laughed.

“Then unfortunately, yes.”

Julian was the operations lead for Marlowe Bridal, one of the designers participating in the showcase.

He was tall, dark-haired, and permanently looked as if he had been handed three emergencies before breakfast.

One of his models had developed an allergic reaction to a fabric adhesive.

We rearranged the lineup in under seven minutes.

He watched me move names across the schedule.

“You’ve done runway before?”

“No.”

“Events?”

“Not professionally.”

He looked at the revised plan.

“You’re lying.”

“I planned a wedding.”

The words escaped before I could stop them.

He smiled. “That explains the thousand-yard stare.”

I laughed unexpectedly.

It was the first time I had joked about the wedding.

Not because it had stopped hurting.

Because pain had finally become something I could stand beside instead of something I was trapped inside.

Julian didn’t ask what happened.

He simply took the new schedule and went back to work.

That made me like him.

Not romantically.

I wasn’t ready for that.

But as a person who understood that curiosity wasn’t entitlement.

The showcase succeeded.

At the end of the night, Elena gathered the team near the loading dock.

“We had exactly eleven minutes of total delay across thirty-two looks,” she said. “That is absurdly good.”

Someone applauded.

Then another person.

Elena pointed at me.

“Most of that is Zinnia.”

Heat climbed my face.

I wanted to say it had been everyone.

I wanted to shrink the compliment until it was safe.

Instead, I said, “Thank you.”

The applause continued.

I let it.

Back in New York, Cleo was having a much harder time accepting attention when it wasn’t flattering.

A former classmate had reposted the bridal boutique image.

Someone else found photographs from my engagement party.

In half of them, Cleo stood beside Lachlan.

The internet did what it always did.

It built a complete moral trial from fragments.

Some comments called her a homewrecker.

Some called Lachlan a cheater.

Some called me dramatic.

Most knew nothing.

Zia Rosa told me only because Cleo had shown up at the Staten Island house crying.

“She wants you to post something defending her,” my aunt said over the phone.

I was folding laundry.

“Defending her from what?”

“People saying she stole Lachlan.”

“Did she?”

Zia Rosa was quiet.

I sat on the edge of my bed.

It was a question I had avoided.

Not whether Cleo and Lachlan had slept together.

I didn’t believe they had.

The betrayal was more complicated than that.

“Zia, I don’t think they had an affair.”

“I don’t either.”

“But she took things that belonged to my relationship because everyone kept letting her.”

“Yes.”

“And Lachlan kept choosing her comfort over mine.”

“Yes.”

“So what exactly am I supposed to defend?”

My aunt sighed.

“She says if you tell people there was no affair, they’ll stop.”

“They won’t.”

We both knew that.

“And I’m not turning my breakup into public content.”

“I told her you might say that.”

“Is she okay?”

The question came automatically.

Zia Rosa noticed.

“You still worry about her.”

“She’s my sister.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to rescue her.”

I stared at the socks in my lap.

Rescue her.

I had done that my whole life.

When Cleo forgot homework, I brought it.

When she wanted the larger bedroom, I moved.

When she cried over a dress, I gave her mine.

When she struggled after college, I edited her applications.

I had called it love.

Maybe some of it was.

Maybe some of it was fear that if I stopped giving, I would stop being useful.

“I’m not posting anything,” I said.

“Good.”

The following Monday, Cleo sent me an email.

Subject: Please just read this.

I nearly deleted it.

Instead, I opened it during lunch.

“Zinnia,

I know you blocked me. I’m not trying to get around that forever. I just need to say something.

People are saying disgusting things about me and Lachlan. We never cheated. You know that.

I know I overstepped with the wedding, but I thought you didn’t care. You always let me choose things. You never seemed excited about details unless someone asked you directly.

I didn’t know you were this unhappy.

I wish you had told me instead of disappearing.

I’m sorry if I made you feel pushed aside.

Cleo.”

I read the phrase twice.

If I made you feel.

It was an apology shaped like an escape route.

Still, buried inside it was something I hadn’t expected.

I thought you didn’t care.

That sentence stayed with me.

Because it was partly true.

I had trained everyone around me to interpret surrender as preference.

That did not excuse them.

But I needed to understand my own part if I wanted my future to be different.

I replied.

“Cleo,

There was no affair, and I have never said there was.

I did tell you when things bothered me. You usually reminded me I was older and should be mature, or you cried until I backed down.

You changed the entrance song even though you knew it was connected to Mom and Dad. You chose my makeup arrangements after I told you who I wanted. You planned to live in my marital home and treated my agreement as automatic.

You didn’t think I didn’t care. You learned that if you pushed long enough, I would give in.

I helped teach you that. I won’t teach you that anymore.

I’m not making a public statement. I’m also not participating in rumors.

I need distance.

Please respect it.

Zinnia.”

My finger hovered over Send.

Then I pressed it.

Ten minutes later, Cleo responded.

“You’re really blaming me for everything?”

I closed the email.

There it was.

The familiar doorway.

Explain. Soothe. Backtrack.

I didn’t enter.

That evening, Julian and several Belladonna employees invited me for tacos after work.

My first instinct was to decline.

I had laundry.

I wanted to review next week’s training packets.

I was tired.

Then I asked myself the question on my sticky note.

What do you want?

I wanted tacos.

So I went.

Julian told a ridiculous story about accidentally delivering a wedding gown to a funeral home.

Elena nearly choked laughing.

I laughed until my stomach hurt.

At nine, I walked home through cool Boston air.

No one had asked me to be quieter.

No one had told me my laugh was too much.

No one needed me to organize their evening.

When I reached my building, I found a man sitting on the front steps.

My body stopped before my mind understood why.

Lachlan stood.

He looked exhausted.

For one dangerous second, my old life rushed toward me.

The familiar shoulders.

The coat I had bought him two Christmases ago.

The face I had once planned to wake beside for the rest of my life.

“Zinnia.”

I didn’t move.

He took one step forward, then stopped himself.

That restraint was new.

“How did you find me?”

His face tightened.

“I didn’t know your address. I knew Belladonna. I waited near the studio and followed you.”

Cold replaced shock.

“You followed me?”

He heard it immediately.

“I know how that sounds.”

“It sounds exactly like what you did.”

“I just wanted five minutes.”

“You could have emailed.”

“You don’t answer.”

“That is an answer.”

His eyes closed briefly.

“You’re right.”

The words surprised me.

He stepped backward.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have followed you.”

I looked at him.

He seemed thinner.

There were shadows beneath his eyes.

Once, that would have made me want to take care of him.

Now I simply noticed.

“What do you want?”

He swallowed.

“To apologize without asking you for anything.”

I almost laughed.

“You flew to Boston and followed me home to ask for nothing?”

“When you put it that way, I understand why this was a bad idea.”

Despite myself, I felt something shift.

Not forgiveness.

Recognition.

He was finally hearing how his own behavior sounded.

“I’ll leave,” he said. “I mean it.”

He reached into his coat and took out an envelope.

“I brought this, but you don’t have to take it.”

“What is it?”

“The original entrance music sheet.”

My throat tightened.

“I found it in the planner’s files. I had the quartet record the arrangement you chose.”

I stared at the envelope.

“Why?”

“Because I finally listened to it.”

His voice broke slightly.

“And I remembered you telling me about your parents.”

I hated that tears immediately burned behind my eyes.

Not because I wanted him back.

Because the version of me who had spent a month choosing that song had deserved to be remembered before the wedding disappeared.

Lachlan placed the envelope on the step instead of handing it to me.

“I’m sorry I noticed after it was too late.”

Then he turned away.

I watched him walk toward the street.

He didn’t ask where I lived.

He didn’t ask me to unblock him.

He didn’t ask whether there was another man.

He simply left.

I stood outside for several minutes after he disappeared.

Then I picked up the envelope.

Upstairs, I played the recording.

The first notes filled my tiny apartment.

I sat on the floor beside the green lamp and cried for my parents.

For the wedding I had once wanted.

For the girl who thought being chosen meant never having to choose herself.

When the song ended, I did not call Lachlan.

I played it again.

This time, it belonged to me.