Wedding Eve Goodbye novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: No Bride Today

Elin walks into the church in jeans and cancels the wedding in front of two hundred guests; Dominic tells her to get lost again and his grandmother gives her a cassette that plays her dead father's voice.

The Marden house was lit up when I got there, and Rhonda had the front door open before I reached the porch.

She had the kettle ready and a blanket warming on the radiator.

She put a cup of tea in my hands and said nothing for a full minute, which was kind.

"You can sleep in your old room," she said at last. "I'll call the church in the morning and spare you the shame of it."

"No."

She blinked at me.

"I told the family last night, and I'll tell the guests myself," I said. "Nobody else is explaining my wedding for me."

"Sweetheart, there will be press."

"Then they can hear it from me."

I slept two hours in my childhood bed with my father's old piano tuning fork on the nightstand.

At ten the next morning I drove my workshop truck to the church in jeans and a canvas jacket, with sawdust still on the cuffs.

Two hundred guests were seated in the pews in silk and morning coats.

A camera crew stood on the steps, because a Haldane wedding was news in Hartford.

The organ was already playing when I walked in through the front doors.

It faltered when the first person turned and saw me.

I walked down the middle of the aisle without any flowers.

Heads turned along both sides, and a woman in a green hat said my name out loud.

Dominic stood at the altar in his black morning coat.

He had come anyway.

He watched me the whole way up, and his face gave me nothing.

I stepped onto the dais, took the microphone off its stand and faced the pews.

"Good morning," I said. "I'm Elin Marden, and I'm sorry you got up early."

A ripple of noise ran through the room and died.

"There is no wedding today. I ended it last night, and I wanted to say so to your faces, not through a florist."

Somebody near the back laughed nervously and stopped.

"The reception is paid for. Please go and eat. Just don't wait for me."

The cameras at the doors had all come up at once.

"Is it the assistant?" a reporter called from the aisle. "Miss Marden, is it Mina Lowell?"

I turned my head to Dominic and waited.

Everyone in that church waited with me.

He could have told two hundred people anything at all.

He could have said it was a mistake, or a lie, or a joke.

"Elin," he said, low and flat. "Get lost."

The sound that came out of the pews was not a gasp.

It was worse than that, a long soft breath from two hundred people who had just heard a groom say it to his bride.

My chest burned, and I stayed standing.

"You've said that to me for three years," I said into the microphone. "I'm finally taking your advice."

I set the microphone down on the altar rail.

It made a small hard click that filled the whole church.

I walked back down the aisle with my head up and did not look at his face.

Rhonda was standing at the end of the third pew with her hand over her mouth, and she reached for my sleeve as I passed.

"Let me drive you," she whispered.

"I have my truck."

I pushed through the doors into the cold.

Cameras flashed in my face, and a microphone swung at my chin.

I kept walking.

A cane tapped on the stone behind me.

"Elin Marden."

Odile Haldane had come out through the side door, and she was moving faster than a woman with a cane should be able to.

She caught my arm with a hand that was surprisingly strong.

"Not here," she said, and she walked me around the corner of the church to my truck, where nobody had a lens.

She opened her handbag and took out a small plastic case.

Inside was a cassette tape with a strip of masking tape across the label, written in a hand I knew.

My father's handwriting said: For Elin.

"Your father gave me this three years ago," Odile said. "He told me to give it to you if you ever walked out on my grandson."

I stared at her.

"My father knew Dominic?"

"Your father knew him better than you do."

"Why didn't you give it to me before?"

"Because I did not think I would live to see you walk out." She pressed it into my palm and folded my fingers over it. "I should have known my grandson would give you reason."

She turned and went back around the corner, her cane ringing on the stone.

I stood alone beside the truck.

Then I climbed in, slammed the door and looked at the old stereo in my dashboard, the one that still took tapes.

I put the cassette in.

There was hiss, and then a rustle, and then a man cleared his throat.

It was my father's voice.

I had not heard it in three years.

He was humming a slow, plain tune, and it was the same tune I had heard through a study door the night before.

"Close your eyes," my father said, warm and tired. "Nobody is coming tonight."

I put both hands over my mouth.

"Sweet dreams, my little wolf."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend