His Favorite Shirt novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Behind the Camera
Thora is handed the camera for Heath and his ex-wife's family portrait, hears the restroom plan, records it, and throws her ring into the lake; Heath wades in and says the lodge is booked in his name.
Sixty guests watched my fiancé put his hand on his ex-wife's back and call it a family portrait.
I was the one holding the camera.
It was the pre-wedding party on the lawn of the lake lodge, twenty-four days before our wedding.
I had booked the lodge, picked the flowers and paid for the lawn.
An hour earlier, Heath's ex-wife Brielle had brought me an iced tea and said, "You're a professional, Thora. You should be the one to take it."
She had also hemmed the flower girl dress for her daughter and held my lens bag while I changed cards.
Heath had grinned. "Perfect. Thora will do the three of us."
That morning he had told me, "Brielle just wants her daughter to have good photos. Nothing changes between you and me."
I had believed him.
Posy was six, and she squinted into the sun between her parents in her yellow flower dress.
Through the lens I had seen her left eye in every frame all afternoon, green with one brown fleck at the edge.
Heath smoothed Brielle's hair and settled his palm on the small of her back.
The lawn cheered.
A man in white loafers shouted, "Look at that! Nothing's changed!"
Brielle looked straight into my lens. "You don't mind, do you?"
I pressed the shutter.
In the frame they looked married, and I was the only one standing outside it.
I told Heath I needed a minute and went into the lodge restroom.
I had just shut myself into a stall when two women came in laughing.
"She's so easy to fool," one said. "She still thinks this is about Posy."
"She has no idea the main event hasn't even started," said the other.
"Wait until Brielle's in the dress. Let's see if the bride can still smile."
"Twenty-four days. Brielle already has the date."
I took out my phone, opened voice memos and pressed record.
"Did you see her face when he touched Brielle's back?"
"She won't say a word. Heath says she never makes a scene."
Heath had said that about me, to them.
When they left, I stopped the recording and stayed where I was.
Last month I had asked him not to invite Brielle to our engagement dinner, and Heath had called me petty.
Posy had looked up at me with red eyes and asked if I didn't like her mom.
Since then I had swallowed every objection I had.
I walked back out onto the lawn.
The party had moved on to a new game.
Someone ran in from the villa and came back carrying a white garment bag.
The zipper slid down, and I knew the dress inside.
It was my Vera Wang, the one I had hung in our suite that morning for the photos.
The woman with the braid held it out to Brielle. "If we're doing this, do it right. Put it on."
"That's my wedding dress," I said.
Heath looked up, impatient. "She's trying it on, Thora. She won't hurt it. Don't kill the mood."
"It's the dress I'm wearing in twenty-four days."
"So? It's one afternoon."
Brielle held it against herself and smiled. "If we want it to look real, aren't we missing a ring?"
Her eyes dropped to my left hand.
Heath was already walking toward me.
With his back to the guests, he said quietly, "Give her the ring. Don't make this uglier than it has to be."
He wore his favorite shirt, the pale blue linen one with the frayed cuffs.
I had stitched his initials inside the collar the night before he proposed to me, on this same dock.
Everyone on the lawn was watching me, waiting for me to be easy.
Sixty phones were up, and nobody thought it was strange.
So I stopped being easy.
I turned and walked down the lawn to the end of the dock.
"Thora," Heath called. "Don't be dramatic."
I pulled the ring off my finger and held it out over the water.
"You want it that badly?" I said. "Go and get it."
I threw it as far as I could.
It made no sound that I could hear.
Heath ran past me and went off the dock in his shirt and his good shoes.
Brielle stepped back from the edge, holding my dress off the boards.
Heath came up spitting water and turned in a circle. "Where did it land?"
Nobody on the lawn laughed.
I raised my phone and filmed him.
He looked up at me, soaked to the collar, and his voice dropped.
"You'll want to think about this, Thora. The lodge, the rooms, the whole weekend is booked in my name."
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