Chapter 16: The Fitting

Niles looked at the red dot for a long second.

Then he laughed, but it came out thin.

"Nobody's going to listen to that, Liv."

"One person will," I said.

He reached for the phone.

I stepped back, and Clay's Land Rover came around the ramp with its headlights on, and Niles put his hands back in his pockets.

He walked to the stairs without another word.

Clay leaned across and pushed the passenger door open.

"What did he want?"

"To leave Bailey at the altar," I said. "For me."

Clay's knuckles went white on the wheel.

"Where to?"

"Oak Street," I said. "She has a fitting at two."

The bridal salon on Oak Street had gray velvet couches and a three-way mirror the size of a garage door.

Bailey stood on the little round platform in the middle of it.

She was in a new gown. White satin, strapless, a long train pinned up in loops behind her.

It was beautiful.

It was nothing like my mother's.

A seamstress knelt at the hem.

A saleswoman stood by with a tray of champagne nobody was drinking.

That was all.

No bridesmaids. No mother. No friends on the velvet couches with their phones out.

Bailey saw me in the mirror and her shoulders went up.

"Did you come to take this one too?"

"I came to give you something."

I held out my phone and a pair of earbuds.

"The garage under the Grand," I said. "This morning. It's three minutes."

She looked at the phone.

"Why would I listen to anything from you?"

"Because I'd want someone to give it to me."

The saleswoman quietly took her tray into the back.

Bailey put the earbuds in.

I pressed play.

I watched her face in the three-way mirror, three times over.

She was still for the first minute.

Then she closed her eyes.

Then her mouth tightened at one corner, the exact way my father's did when a number came in wrong.

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