My Power Showed Me His Cheating An Hour Earlier novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Veil

Her mother's veil is stained with her best friend's lipstick, and Brenna walks to the microphone to read her vows.

"I'll find it," Wells said, and hung up before I could answer.

By the time I got to the hotel, the veil was back.

It was lying across the bed in the bridal suite.

The makeup artist was already set up at the window, humming, laying out brushes.

"There she is! The bride!"

I didn't hear the rest.

I was looking at the veil.

One whole side was crushed into creases.

Two of the tiny pearls on the edge were gone. Just the threads left, sticking up.

And near the comb, on the white silk, there was a smear of glossy pink lipstick.

Larissa's pink.

I'd bought her that lipstick for her birthday.

My mother sewed this veil in her last month.

She did it from a hospital bed at Jefferson, with a pillow under her elbows because her arms shook.

She sewed the pearls on one at a time.

She made the silk roses on the edge by folding scraps from her shop, petal by petal.

Some days she only finished one.

"I won't be there to see you walk," she told me, biting off a thread. "So this'll walk you."

"Mom."

"When you put it on, pretend I'm holding your hand. Okay?"

After the funeral I put the veil in a box and couldn't open it for a year.

I brought it to the hotel myself on Tuesday. I asked the front desk three times to keep it in the safe storage, separate.

The makeup artist came up beside me.

"Oh, honey." She touched the creases. "I've got a steamer. And I can try some micellar on that stain."

I couldn't look away from the pink.

"No," I said. "Leave it."

"You're sure?"

"Leave it exactly how it is."

She did my face while I watched the mirror.

I did look beautiful.

I looked like a girl who couldn't wait.

At ten to eleven, the door opened.

Kellan, in a black tux, his hair still damp, smelling like his good cologne.

Under it, faintly, roses and vanilla.

Larissa's perfume.

"Wow," he said softly. "Bren. Look at you."

He came up behind my chair.

He picked up the veil and settled it on my head, and frowned at the creases.

"Must have gotten squashed in storage," he said.

He fixed the comb in my hair.

Then he bent down to kiss me, and our breath crossed.

Black.

The hotel's lounge on the mezzanine.

The same low lights. The same velvet couch from Wednesday.

Larissa had my veil on her head.

Her eyes were wet and her lipstick was all over her mouth.

"Kellan. Are you crazy? You're marrying her in an hour."

His voice was rough again.

"That's why it's the last time."

She laughed through her tears.

"You say that every time."

He didn't argue.

He wiped her face with his thumb.

She hooked her arms around his neck and pulled him down, and they fell onto the couch together.

The veil slid off her hair.

It floated down slow and white.

They lay down on top of it.

I came back so hard my chair rocked.

Kellan was smiling at me in the mirror.

"Nervous?"

I couldn't feel my hands.

The day my mother died, both of them were in that room at Jefferson.

She was so light by then you could see the bones in her wrists.

She grabbed Kellan's hand with what was left of her strength.

"Take care of my girl. Promise me. You'll never let anything hurt her."

He cried. He kissed her knuckles.

"I promise. Nothing will ever hurt her. Not while I'm alive."

Larissa was on my other side, holding my hand so tight it ached.

"I'll be right there. On her wedding day, I'll walk her down the aisle for you."

My mother smiled at her. She called her "my other girl" until the end.

The two people who made those promises had used her veil as a blanket.

An hour before my wedding.

Somebody knocked on the door.

"Five minutes!" It was the emcee. "Mr. Thurlow, Ms. Pomeroy, we're ready when you are!"

Kellan held out his hand to me.

"Ready, wife?"

I looked at it.

Long fingers. Clean nails.

When I had the flu two winters ago, that hand changed the cold cloth on my forehead every hour for a whole night.

I put my hand in his.

He walked me to the ballroom doors.

On the easel outside, the poster from Cape May stood under a spotlight.

Our faces. Our names in gold.

Brenna and Kellan.

My stomach dropped.

Wells had said "Done."

I looked around for him and couldn't find him.

The doors swung open.

Three hundred people turned in their chairs.

Larissa was waiting at the front in pale green silk, a bouquet of my own peonies in her hands.

Her lipstick was perfect now.

She mouthed, "You look gorgeous."

At the end of the aisle, the emcee lifted his microphone.

"Before we begin, the bride has a special surprise. She's going to read her own vows."

A happy murmur went through the room.

Kellan glanced at me, startled.

"When did you add that?"

"Thursday."

He thought it would be about him.

It was.

The emcee put the microphone in my hand.

I unfolded the paper I'd written in the back of my shop at two in the morning.

Behind me, a big screen glowed with our engagement photo.

Larissa wiped a tear for the crowd.

I looked straight at her.

"I want to thank Kellan," I said. "And my best friend, Larissa Delancey."

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