Chapter 5: String Girl

Cal moved before anyone else in the room did.

He tore the fire extinguisher off its bracket by the service door, pulled the pin with his teeth and walked straight at the flames.

White powder hit the screen in a roaring cloud.

The fire went out in four seconds. The drape hung in black rags, and the projector kept throwing the picture onto smoke.

Somebody finally found the plug, and the screen went dark.

The fire alarm started shrieking. Cal reached up, popped the cover off the alarm and pulled a wire, and it stopped.

"It's out," he told the room. "Nobody run. It's out."

Nobody ran. Nobody wanted to miss anything.

I was still standing at the altar in my dress.

The smoke smelled like burned roses. There was white powder on the hem of my skirt.

Across from me, Kelsey stood with her bouquet against her chest and powder in her curls.

Rafferty was on his knees by the broken laptop, coughing.

I took off my engagement ring.

It was an old-cut diamond on a thin gold band. Rafferty had said it was his grandmother's.

I walked over to Kelsey and took her hand, the one without the flowers, and put the ring in her palm.

I closed her fingers over it.

"You were first," I said. "Keep him."

Her face crumpled for one second. Then she lifted her chin.

A hundred and eighty phones were still up, getting all of it.

Rafferty got to his feet.

He had powder on one shoulder of his tux and his rose was gone.

He looked at me, at the phones, at his mother, and I watched him decide.

"Ask her how she knew," he said.

He said it loud. He had a manager's voice, made for lobbies.

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