Antler Crown, Silent Departure novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Before the Soup

Bridget swaps the reception slideshow for the call recording and plays it for the whole ballroom while her grandmother finishes her pie.

I did not go far.

The diner across the street from the Larkmoor had a booth by the window, and Dot was already sitting in it.

She had on her lavender suit and her church hat with the little net veil, and she was cutting a slice of cherry pie in half.

"That tall Brannigan boy called me," she said. "He said you'd want pie."

I slid into the booth in my wedding dress, and the skirt filled the whole bench.

A waitress looked at me, looked at Dot, and went to refill someone else's coffee.

"Gran, Zack picked up another woman this morning," I said. "He called me from a parking lot with antlers on his head and told me to wait upstairs."

I put my phone on the table and played her the recording.

She watched it with her mouth a thin line.

When Lacey's voice came on, Dot's fork stopped halfway to her plate.

"Lacey," she said.

"She told him to put my shoes on her."

Dot set the fork down very carefully.

"I never liked how that boy shakes hands," she said. "Like he's closing on a used car. But I thought he was only lazy, Bridget. I did not know he was cruel."

"Nobody told me, Gran."

"I'd have told you."

"I know. Everybody in that building could see it coming but me."

The tears came again, and I let them run down into my collar.

Dot handed me a napkin and a second one for the next round.

"You can cry, and you can eat," she said. "You've done neither since Thursday."

I ate three bites of pie.

It was warm, and it tasted like the first normal thing all day.

Then I looked out the window.

A florist's van was parked at the side door, and a man in a suit was carrying a white arch from the back.

My guests were beginning to come up the front steps in good coats, holding gifts.

Some of them were my coworkers from the dental office.

In an hour they were going to sit down in front of Zack in his antlers and watch Poppy walk toward him in my shoes.

"They'll tell everyone I had a breakdown," I said. "Lacey will say it first. She's good at being sad in public."

"Then don't give them the chance."

"I can't go in there and yell, Gran."

"No," Dot said. "You'd cry halfway through, and he'd pat your shoulder."

I laughed once, and it hurt.

Then I remembered something that I had stopped thinking about weeks ago.

I had built the reception slideshow myself.

Two hundred photos of Zack and me, set to our song, uploaded through the hotel's event portal on my own account.

The hotel had given me the login so I could fix typos.

The slideshow ran on the three big screens in the ballroom as guests sat down for lunch, and the hotel also streamed it to a link for Zack's grandmother in Tampa.

I picked up my phone and opened the portal.

The password still worked.

"What are you doing?" Dot asked.

"Replacing the first slide."

I uploaded the recording from the call.

The bar crawled across the screen.

My hands were not shaking anymore.

I moved the video to the top of the show and set it to start at the beginning of the seating, with sound.

Then I opened the livestream link for Tampa, so I could see what the ballroom saw.

It showed a wide view from the back of the room.

Round tables, white chairs, gold place cards that I had folded.

Guests were still finding their seats. The three screens above the head table showed our engagement photo, the one on the beach.

Zack stood at the front by the arch, with the antlers on his head, shaking someone's hand and laughing.

Poppy was beside him in a white dress and a veil. She was holding a bouquet in both hands and looking around at the room.

She was wearing my shoes.

I could see the silver straps.

Lacey stood by the sound booth with a tablet and a headset on, smiling at the guests as they passed.

"Do it before the soup," Dot said. "People forgive anything after soup."

The staff had begun to carry out the bread baskets.

I pressed play.

The engagement photo disappeared from all three screens at once.

Zack's face filled them instead, forty feet wide.

His voice came out of the ballroom speakers and straight through my phone.

"Bridge, don't freak out. I picked up Poppy. I'm letting her try the whole wedding first."

Every head in the room turned up.

On the livestream, Lacey dropped the tablet and ran for the cable box behind the booth.

Zack's mother stood up from the front row.

The picture on my phone jerked and went black.

I put it face down on the table.

"Finish your pie, Dot," I said. "We're going in."

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