Chapter 5: I Wanted to Go Home

My fiancé, meanwhile, had hung up on me to stay at a music festival with his friend.

The doctor looked at me, his expression grim.

“This was a threatened miscarriage. If you’d been brought in thirty minutes earlier, we might have been able to save the baby.”

I still remembered the utter despair of that day.

I called Hollis again and again, but he never picked up.

After dark, my parents arrived, having driven hundreds of miles.

But Hollis, who lived less than five miles from the hospital, never came.

Any hope I had for him died that day.

Later, I went home with my parents to recover.

Thinking of it now, I opened my chat with Chloe, my closest cousin.

She had messaged me before the wedding was supposed to start.

[Willa, is the wedding about to begin?]

A few minutes later, another message.

[Don’t be too sad. I know your parents said no one from the family should go, but they’ve been regretting it ever since.]

[I think you’ll make up with them someday.]

She had also sent a video.

Seeing my parents’ faces in the thumbnail, I hadn’t dared to watch it.

Now, my thumb pressed play.

The video was taken in Chloe’s living room.

My parents were sitting on the sofa, their eyes red and swollen.

My mother was wiping away tears.

“How can Willa be so stubborn? I told her from the beginning that man was no good.”

“What kind of man goes to a music festival with some other woman while his fiancée is having a miscarriage?”

“Then he stands outside our door all night in a blizzard until he nearly freezes to death, whispers a few sweet nothings, and she just forgives him.”

My father had been silent the whole time.

My mother slapped his arm.

“And you. Why did you have to say something so harsh? ‘If she marries him, you’d pretend you didn’t have a daughter.’ What was that?”

“Now look. She really won’t come home.”

Seeing the new gray in their hair, my own tears started to fall, splashing onto my phone screen.

My father was quiet for a long time before he took a bank card from his wallet and handed it to Chloe.

“When you get a chance, give this to Willa.”

“There’s fifty thousand dollars in it. I don’t want her out there all alone with no way out.”

I covered my face and finally let myself sob.

Only one thought echoed in my mind.

I wanted to go home.

I didn’t bother packing neatly, just shoved everything into my suitcase.

I couldn’t even wait for a flight the next day. I spent three hundred dollars on a long-distance Uber.

Just as I zipped my suitcase shut, Hollis called.

“Why aren’t you answering my messages?”

I didn’t say anything.

He clicked his tongue, not pressing the issue. He just said casually:

“Things got a little out of hand. A lot of the decorations in the main hall got wrecked.”

“I had the hotel set up a small hall for us. We’ll go there and finish the ceremony.”

The main banquet hall was massive, capable of holding hundreds of guests.

The small hall was just big enough for a makeshift ceremony.

The grand ballroom was for the woman playing bride.

The little side room was for the actual bride.

Coming from Hollis, it sounded so reasonable, so matter-of-fact.

But I no longer had the energy to argue.

I replied calmly, “Okay.”

The silence on his end told me he was stunned I hadn’t fought back.

After a couple of seconds, he seemed to let out a breath of relief.

“That’s more like it.”

“The hotel is setting it up now. I even had someone order another cake, as close to the original as possible.”

Then his voice lowered, becoming intimate.

“Willa, you’re about to be my wife.”

“The ceremony is at nine. Be on time.”

The call ended.

I slipped the diamond ring from my finger and placed it on the nightstand.

Then I picked up my suitcase and walked out to the car that would take me home.