His Password Was Her Birthday, So I Canceled Our Wedding novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Aisle

Justine walks into the wedding hall and tells 140 guests there is no wedding while Clive puts Gianna's post on the screen; Gianna arrives in white, Brendan runs to comfort her, and she whispers that Justine should ask where he goes in March.

At twenty to five, my father and I walked into the wedding hall in Brooklyn.

I wore jeans and the camel coat.

The ring was still in my pocket.

White chairs stood in rows, white roses lined the aisle, and a hundred and forty people were turning in their seats to see the bride.

A string trio started the processional.

I raised my hand, and the cellist stopped mid-note.

At the front, Brendan stood under the arch in a gray tuxedo with three groomsmen beside him.

His face went through relief and then irritation, in that order.

Clive, the best man, stood at the end of the line with a boutonniere pinned to his lapel.

He looked at me and gave a very small nod.

I walked down the aisle to the microphone stand by the guest book.

My father stayed beside me, close enough that his sleeve touched mine.

"Thank you all for coming," I said, and my voice carried.

"There won't be a wedding today."

Nobody moved.

"I canceled it last night at the airport. The cancellation emails were deleted before they reached you, and that's not an accident. I'm sorry you got dressed for nothing."

Brendan came down the steps.

"Justine, stop," he said, smiling for the guests. "We'll talk privately."

"I'd rather it was public," I said. "Fourteen months ago I was seven months pregnant and called a car to the hospital."

"The car took me to a cemetery instead. Someone had changed the destination from inside my account."

"I lost my daughter in the back seat."

A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.

"Her name was Poppy," I said.

Brendan's smile slid off.

"That's enough," he said, low.

"It's not nearly enough," I said, and I looked at Clive.

Clive walked to the sound table at the side of the hall, where the DJ had set up the slideshow.

"Sorry, man," he told the DJ, and plugged in his phone.

The big screen behind the arch, which had been showing a photo of Brendan and me at a lake, went black.

Then it showed a post.

Gianna Santoro's name sat at the top, with her profile picture.

Everyone read it together.

Her ex still used her birthday for every password.

She could get into his life and his fiancee's whenever she wanted.

She was going to walk into his wedding and take him back.

Below it a small icon showed the only like on the post.

Clive zoomed in until the name was readable across the room.

It was the wedding account.

The one Brendan had made, with the caterer's emails and the band's contract, and a picture of the two of us as its avatar.

"That's mine," Brendan said, and stopped.

He looked at the screen, then at the guests.

A man from his office said, "Brendan, did you like that?"

"Someone else has the login," Brendan said. "Everyone knows that."

"Who?" I asked.

He opened his mouth.

He could not say her name to a hundred and forty people while they were looking at it.

His mother rose from the front row, pearls swinging.

"This is vulgar," Maureen said. "Justine, you're upsetting everyone."

My father cleared his throat once.

"No, ma'am," he said. "She isn't."

He doesn't speak in rooms.

The whole hall heard him anyway.

And then the doors at the back opened.

Gianna came in alone, in a long white dress with a lace back and a veil clipped in her hair.

She had planned this part for weeks.

She had not planned the screen.

She stopped under the lights at the end of the aisle and saw her own post on a wall twelve feet high.

Her face did one quick thing, and the guests saw it.

An older woman in the third row said clearly, "Is that a wedding dress?"

Gianna pressed her fingers to her mouth.

Her eyes filled.

She was very good.

"I only came to see Brendan's mother," she said, trembling. "I didn't know it would be like this. Someone wrote that. It isn't mine."

Then Carla appeared from nowhere and put her arms around her, saying her name over and over.

Brendan looked at me.

He looked at the screen.

Then he walked up the aisle, past my father, past me, and took Gianna by the shoulders.

"Hey," he said, softly. "It's okay. Come on, you're shaking."

A hundred and forty people watched him comfort her.

I felt nothing at all, and then my knees started to shake.

Clive put his hand against my back without a word.

Gianna's face turned into Brendan's lapel.

Over his shoulder she looked straight at me, and for a second her eyes were dry.

"I didn't choose the cemetery, you know," she said, so low only the three of us heard.

"Ask him where he goes in March."

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