Chapter 2 - The Altar Abandoned
Back at the chapel, the illusion shattered slowly, then all at once.
Later, Drew told me how it unfolded. At 2:35 p.m., five minutes after the processional should have started, Nora walked out from the bridal suite herself, holding her train above the polished hardwood floor. Her veil was lifted. Her makeup was immaculate, framed by diamonds I had spent three months of salary to buy.
She looked straight toward the back pew, where my father, Richard Vance, sat upright in an Italian wool suit, his silver hair neatly combed back. Beside him, my mother Eleanor adjusted her pastel hat with practiced poise. They looked like royalty. They looked like grieving saints finally welcomed back into the fold.
“Where is he?” Nora hissed to her maid of honor, loud enough for the first three rows to hear.
Drew stood at the front edge of the altar. He slowly removed his boutonnière—a white rose pinned to his lapel—and dropped it onto the communion rail.
“He’s not coming, Nora,” Drew said clearly.
The murmur started in the back row and rippled like a sudden draft through dry grass. Nora’s mother, Linda, gasped, rising to her feet. Richard Vance’s jaw tightened. For a fraction of a second, the gentle, forgiving facade dropped from my father’s face, revealing the vicious, predatory glare I had spent a decade running from.
“Drew, shut up!” Nora snapped, stepping closer, her voice dropping to a furious whisper. “Call him. Tell him to get in here right now. I have fifty people from my agency coming to the reception!”
“He left the hotel fifteen minutes ago,” Drew replied. He didn't blink. “And you knew he would. You read his journal, Nora. You held his ice packs when he had panic attacks. You knew what Richard did to him. And you put his abusers in the second row for a photo op.”
Linda rushed forward, her heels clicking aggressively on the stone aisle. “How dare you speak to my daughter like that on her wedding day! Where is Mason? He signed the vendor contracts! Who is paying the balance for the catering?”
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Drew didn’t answer. He turned his back on them, walked down the center aisle past eighty-six staring faces, pushed open the heavy oak doors of the chapel, and left them standing in the silence of their own ambush.
***