An Anonymous Confession Game Ruined My Wedding novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Waiting Room

At the hospital Brooke's mother blames Finbar in front of everyone; Dalton tells the facts; Finbar gives back the ring and finds the joint savings emptied.

The emergency room waiting area at St. Luke's had twenty-two chairs and a television showing a home renovation show with the sound off.

I took the chair nearest the door.

Hattie sat beside me with her hands pressed between her knees. She had not said a word since the lodge.

Brooke's mother came through the inner doors a minute after we sat down. She had ridden in the ambulance and had been out of sight with Brooke ever since.

She crossed the waiting room and found me before she found the front desk.

"There he is," she said.

A man with a bandaged thumb looked up. A woman holding a sleeping boy looked up.

"My daughter is back there on a table because of him," Brooke's mother said, loud enough for the whole room.

"He abandoned her at the altar and then he let his sister put her hands on us."

"Nobody was at the altar," I said. "I left before two."

"You left her."

"It's off."

"He's a coward," she said to the woman holding the boy. "She was ready to marry him. She would have married him this afternoon."

"She was ready to marry me while she was sleeping with my best friend," I said.

The room got very quiet.

The woman with the boy looked at the television. The man with the thumb looked at his thumb.

Brooke's mother opened her mouth and then shut it.

"That is a lie," she said, at last. But she said it much lower.

"Ask her," I said.

A nurse called Brooke's name through the inner door and her mother went through it without looking back.

Hattie let out a long shaky breath.

"I shouldn't have shoved her," she said.

"You shoved her second."

"That doesn't help."

"No. But it's true."

The sliding doors opened again, and Dalton walked in.

He carried Poppy asleep on his shoulder, her yellow raincoat bunched up around her neck. He had her whale in his free hand.

He saw me and stopped.

For a moment neither of us moved.

Then he crossed the room and sat down in the chair across from me.

"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me," he said.

"Good."

"Hattie, can you take her? Just for a minute?"

"No," Hattie said.

"I'll sit with her," I said.

Hattie turned and stared at me.

"She's two," I said. "She didn't do any of it."

Dalton laid Poppy on the chairs next to me, and I put his coat under her head.

She did not wake up.

"Tell me from the start," I said.

Dalton rubbed his face with both hands.

"A cookout at your place," he said. "You were at the store for ice, and she was on the back steps, and I sat down."

"That's six years ago."

"Yeah."

"You were at my engagement dinner."

"I know."

"You gave the toast."

"I know."

"And Poppy?"

His voice dropped. "Brooke told you she was in Chicago for work, for the last four months. She wasn't. She was in a rental in Superior, and I was driving over every weekend."

"And she gave birth to your daughter and walked back into my apartment," I said.

"She said she'd fix it. She said it was a mistake, and she'd end it and tell you.

"Then the wedding got a date, and she said the timing was wrong."

"And the ex in Denver?"

"There's no ex in Denver," Dalton said. "I made her up."

Hattie made a sound in her throat.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Dalton said again.

"I'm telling you I asked her a hundred times to let me say it.

"Every time she said after the wedding. After the honeymoon. After the holidays."

"You could have said it yourself."

"I could have."

He didn't give me a reason, and I was grateful. I did not want one.

Poppy stirred and put her hand on my sleeve in her sleep.

I looked down at the small fingers. I had taught her how to hold a spoon.

I took a long breath, and I moved her hand to the whale.

Then I stood up.

"Where are you going?" Dalton asked.

"Home. My home. My name's on that lease, not hers."

"Finbar."

"Don't call me."

"Finbar, she's going to want to see you."

"She can see me when she's ready to say it out loud to anyone who asks. Not before."

I told Hattie to stay with him, and she said "Not a chance," and she walked out with me instead.

In the parking lot I sat in the truck and took out my phone.

The bank app had a red banner across the top. I thought it was a promotion.

It was not a promotion.

I opened the joint savings account.

It was the money Brooke and I had put aside for four years.

We had been going to buy a house with it.

The balance said zero dollars and zero cents.

I scrolled to the transaction list.

At 8:12 that morning, forty-one thousand dollars had been transferred to an account ending in 7710.

It was not a number I knew.

It was a number I would learn very well.

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