Chapter 8: The Wedding Without a Bride

By the time Lachlan reached the venue, almost every seat was filled.

White roses climbed the columns at the entrance. The string quartet was already playing the arrangement Cleo had chosen in place of my parents’ song. Guests in dark suits and pastel dresses turned toward the doors whenever they opened, expecting to see me.

Instead, they saw the groom walking in alone.

The wedding planner hurried toward him. “Mr. Kerr, we can delay fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. But the officiant has another ceremony this afternoon.”

“She’s not coming,” Lachlan said.

The planner stopped.

Behind him, Cleo made a frustrated sound. “Don’t say it like that. She’s upset. She’ll calm down.”

Lachlan turned. “She blocked me.”

That finally silenced her.

Rhys stood a few feet away with his camera hanging uselessly at his side. “Zinnia blocked me too.”

Cleo checked her phone. Her face tightened. “Me too.”

For years, blocking any of them would have been unimaginable for me. I was the one who answered. The one who returned calls even when I was angry. The one who explained myself until everyone else felt comfortable again.

Today there was nothing for them to reach.

Zia Rosa arrived through the side doors with Zio Marco. She took one look at Lachlan’s face and stopped.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

Zia Rosa’s expression changed. Not panic. Understanding.

She looked toward the empty bridal entrance, then at Cleo’s champagne-colored dress, professionally styled hair, and bouquet-shaped wrist corsage.

“Did any of you actually speak to Zinnia this morning?”

No one answered.

Zio Marco frowned. “She left the house yesterday with her suitcase.”

Lachlan’s head snapped toward him. “Suitcase?”

“Yes. I assumed she was staying at the hotel.”

The planner quietly said, “Ms. Vitale never checked in.”

Zia Rosa closed her eyes.

Cleo crossed her arms. “She could have told us she was leaving instead of humiliating everyone.”

Zia Rosa opened her eyes again. “Leaving?”

Her voice was so calm that Cleo seemed not to recognize the warning.

“She’s the bride, Cleo. If the bride leaves and none of you notices until the ceremony, perhaps humiliation isn’t the first thing you should be worried about.”

Cleo flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

“You rarely do.”

Lachlan rubbed a hand over his face.

His mother was approaching now, followed by two relatives asking whether there had been an accident. The room had begun to hum with whispers.

He looked toward the first row.

One chair had a small framed photograph placed on it.

My parents.

He had forgotten about that.

No, he corrected himself.

I had arranged it.

Months ago, I had told him I wanted their photograph near the aisle. I had shown him the frame. I had cried while explaining why the entrance song mattered.

He had listened. Hadn’t he?

Then why couldn’t he remember the melody?

“Where’s the music list?” he asked suddenly.

The planner blinked. “Excuse me?”

“The original one. The song Zinnia chose.”

Cleo’s expression shifted. “Why does that matter now?”

He looked at her. “Because I don’t remember what it was.”

No one spoke.

The planner slowly opened her tablet.

At that exact moment, I was forty thousand feet above the ground with my forehead against an airplane window.

The flight attendant had just handed me coffee.

It tasted terrible.

I drank it anyway.

My seatmate was an elderly woman named June who had introduced herself five minutes after takeoff and then apologized for being talkative.

“You look like you’re moving,” she said, glancing at the folder sticking out of my tote.

“I am.”

“Job?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Congratulations.”

The word caught me off guard.

No one had congratulated me. No one even knew.

“Thank you.”

She returned to her crossword, leaving me with a strange warmth in my chest.

That was how my new life began.

Not with applause. Not with someone chasing me through an airport.

With bad coffee and a stranger saying congratulations.

When we landed in Boston, I turned on my phone long enough to contact my new employer and Zia Rosa.

I didn’t unblock anyone.

I sent my aunt one message.

“I’m safe. I’m in Boston. I accepted a job here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I needed to leave before anyone could talk me out of it.”

Her response came almost immediately.

“Are you sure?”

I stared at the question.

For once, it didn’t mean Are you sure you want to upset Cleo?

It didn’t mean Are you sure you want to disappoint Lachlan?

It meant Are you sure this is what you want?

“Yes.”

Three dots appeared.

Then: “Then I’m proud of you. Call me when you’re settled.”

My eyes burned.

I swallowed hard and booked a rideshare to the furnished studio Belladonna Beauty Group had arranged for my first month.

The apartment was smaller than my place in Queens.

One bedroom alcove. A narrow kitchen. A window overlooking a brick building.

Nothing in it belonged to Lachlan.

Nothing had been selected by Cleo.

I set my suitcase down in the middle of the floor and stood there listening to the refrigerator hum.

For the first time, empty space didn’t feel like something waiting for someone else to fill it.

It felt mine.

Back in New York, the wedding was officially canceled at 12:07 p.m.

Guests were told there had been a private family matter.

The phrase lasted less than ten minutes before photographs began appearing online.

An empty aisle. A groom standing near the altar. Cleo in a near-white dress beside him.

By evening, people had created their own explanations.

Cold feet. Family emergency. Cheating. Pregnancy. A secret fight.

Someone posted one of Rhys’s bridal boutique photographs from the week before.

The image showed Lachlan adjusting the bow at Cleo’s waist while she smiled at him in the mirror.

The caption read: “Wasn’t this supposed to be the groom and the bride?”

Rhys deleted the photograph.

It was too late.

Lachlan sat alone in the apartment we had been supposed to share after the wedding.

Pink curtain samples lay across the kitchen counter.

Cleo had left them there three days earlier.

He stared at them for a long time.

Then his phone buzzed.

His mother. He ignored it.

Another call. The planner.

Another. An investor from his startup.

He turned the phone facedown.

On the dining table sat the envelope the receptionist had delivered from me several days earlier.

He had been too busy to open it.

He pulled it toward himself.

Inside was the apartment keycard. The office visitor pass. The corrected client proposal.

There was no note.

That absence bothered him more than anger would have.

He opened the proposal.

My edits filled the margins.

Grammar. Pricing inconsistencies. A missing liability clause. A calculation error that would have cost his company nearly twelve thousand dollars if the client had accepted the draft as written.

He stared at the corrections.

Then he remembered asking me to proofread it at eleven thirty one night.

I had been tired.

He had promised dinner in return.

Had they ever gone?

He couldn’t remember.

His phone rang again.

This time it was Cleo.

He answered.

“Lachlan, people are being horrible online. Rhys says we should post something.”

“About what?”

“About the picture. About Zinnia leaving. People are making it sound like—”

“Like what?”

Cleo went quiet.

He looked at the pink fabric samples.

“Why were you wearing a bridal gown at her fitting?”

“It wasn’t her actual gown.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Rhys needed sample photos for the boutique. You know that.”

“And why was I in them?”

“You were already there.”

That answer sounded reasonable.

It was the sort of answer he had accepted a hundred times.

Tonight it irritated him.

“Where was Zinnia?”

“What?”

“During those photos. Where was she?”

Cleo sighed. “I don’t know. She left.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, Lachlan.”

Neither did he.

He closed his eyes.

“She was standing right there, and none of us know when she left.”

Cleo’s voice sharpened. “Are you blaming me because she decided to ruin her own wedding?”

His eyes opened. “No.”

For a second, Cleo relaxed.

Then he continued.

“I’m trying to understand why I didn’t notice.”

The silence on the line changed.

“Lachlan—”

“I’ll call you later.”

He ended the call.

Across the room, unopened wedding gifts were stacked beside the wall.

He suddenly hated looking at them.

Meanwhile, I spent my first evening in Boston eating noodles from a cardboard container on the floor.

My new supervisor, Elena Park, had emailed me the schedule for Monday.

Orientation at eight thirty. Studio walkthrough. Training curriculum review. Client consultations after lunch.

I read every line twice.

Then I opened the folder containing my employment contract.

My name appeared at the top.

Zinnia Vitale.

No one’s sister.

No one’s fiancée.

Just mine.

At 9:14 p.m., an unfamiliar number called.

I almost ignored it.

Something made me answer.

“Hello?”

There was silence.

Then Lachlan’s voice.

“Zinnia.”

My fingers tightened around the phone.

He must have borrowed someone’s number.

“Please don’t hang up.”

I said nothing.

“I just need to know you’re safe.”

“I’m safe.”

His breath left him.

“Where are you?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

A week ago, those words would have broken me.

Now they only made me tired.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer quickly enough.

I looked around the tiny apartment.

My suitcase was open. My shoes were beside the wall. Tomorrow’s clothes hung from the back of a chair.

Evidence of a life he knew nothing about.

“Zinnia, come home. We can fix this.”

“There is no home for me to come back to.”

“Our apartment—”

“The one Cleo already picked a bedroom in?”

He went silent.

I continued before he could explain.

“You changed my wedding music because she wanted something livelier. You let her choose my makeup team. You canceled our sunrise plans to take her for a manicure. You drove away from my family’s house after being specifically asked to take me with you. On our wedding morning, you didn’t realize I had never checked into the hotel until you came looking for me.”

“I know.”

“No. You know now.”

The distinction silenced him.

I closed my eyes.

“I spent years telling you when something hurt. You kept teaching me that the easiest way to keep you was to stop complaining.”

“That isn’t what I wanted.”

“Maybe not. But it’s what you rewarded.”

He breathed my name.

I felt the old reflex rise.

Comfort him. Explain more gently. Make sure he understood I wasn’t calling him a monster.

Then I remembered I didn’t have to manage his feelings anymore.

“The wedding is over, Lachlan.”

“Postponed.”

“No.”

My voice was quiet.

“It’s over.”

For the first time, he sounded frightened.

“Are you ending our engagement?”

I looked down at my left hand.

The ring was still there.

I had forgotten to remove it.

Slowly, I slid it from my finger.

“Yes.”

The word was easier than I expected.

“What about us?”

I placed the ring on the windowsill.

“There hasn’t been an us for a long time. I was just the last person to admit it.”

He said my name again.

I ended the call.

Then I blocked that number too.

Outside, Boston traffic moved below my window.

I expected to collapse.

Instead, I picked up my noodles and finished dinner.

Tomorrow morning, for the first time in years, I had somewhere to be that I had chosen entirely for myself.