I Fled My Wedding and Lit the Dawn novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: The Eve
On the eve of my wedding, at eleven ten at night, I went to Isaías's library to look for my father's pen.
Tomorrow at five in the afternoon, I was going to sign the marriage certificate at the Club de la Unión in Miraflores, in front of two hundred guests, with the silver pen that Don Aurelio Paredes had used all his life to sign his wool orders.
Isaías had kept it in his desk since the day of the funeral.
The house was silent.
His relatives were sleeping upstairs, and the musicians were packing up their music stands in the garden.
I came down barefoot, in my silk robe with my hair loose, humming.
Three years ago, Isaías Salvatierra had pulled me out of the fire that my life had become.
When my father died of a heart attack in front of the flames of his wool mill, when the banks repossessed everything down to my bed, when my fiancé, Gianfranco Zevallos, left me one rainy afternoon for my own friend, it was Isaías who showed up at the hospital door in a gray suit with an envelope of money.
He paid the debts.
He paid for the funeral.
He put a hand on my shoulder and told me I wasn't alone.
For three years, he never asked me for anything.
Until one afternoon he asked me to marry him, with a simple ring and a calm voice.
I said yes, convinced I had finally found a safe place.
I reached the hallway to the library.
The door was ajar, and a line of yellow light spilled out.
I heard voices.
"Don't look at me like that," Isaías was saying. "It's the cheapest wedding I've ever gotten."
I recognized the other voice: Yuri Lazo, his lawyer and childhood friend.
"Are you really going to marry her?" Yuri asked.
"Tomorrow."
"Aren't you afraid she'll find out someday?"
"Find out what?"
"That your people started the fire at the dawn. That her father's death was your fire."
I stood still, my hand on the doorframe.
I heard nothing else for a second.
Then I heard the sound of a glass, ice against crystal, and Isaías's voice, as calm as a notary's.
"Who's going to tell her?"
"I don't know. One of the workers."
"The workers are scattered and poorly paid. And Gianfranco did his part. He married Karol, just as we agreed, and she was left with no one to turn to."
"A less honest man couldn't have done it."
"Yuri, please. I paid her debts. I buried her father. I gave her a roof, three years of company, and my last name." A little laugh sounded. "With that, we're even."
"And what if she finds out someday?"
"Then she finds out. What's she going to do? Cry?"
The ice clinked again.
My knees were shaking.
I remembered the rain, Gianfranco's black umbrella, his voice saying "I can't go on," and the wall of silence that had closed in around me afterward.
I remembered Isaías wiping my tears with a linen handkerchief.
I remembered the first time he called me "my love."
Everything fit.
Everything—every piece, every pause, every kind gesture—had been a carefully built cage.
And I had walked in alone, grateful, with a smile.
I didn't scream.
I didn't push the door open.
I stepped back, then another step, silently.
I went up the stairs, grabbed my handbag from the bedroom, my passport, my mother's necklace, and my father's photo.
I put on jeans, a coat, sneakers.
I left the wedding dress hanging in the closet, its lace train draped over a chair.
I slipped the ring off my finger.
I left it on the pillow, next to the note Isaías had written me that afternoon: "Tomorrow the best part begins, my love."
I went down the service stairs.
In the kitchen, a maid was dozing by the stove.
I opened the garden door, crossed the lawn, jumped the low fence at the back, and ran to the avenue.
It was a quarter to twelve.
It was raining.
Lima rain is fine, almost invisible, and it soaks you without you noticing.
I raised my hand.
A taxi stopped, and I asked him to take me to the Panamericana Sur.
From the back seat, I saw in the distance the lights of Isaías's house, still on.
I didn't feel rage.
I felt something colder, cleaner.
My phone buzzed.
A message.
"Mariluz. Should I bring you some tea to your room? You went to bed early. I."
I turned it off.
The taxi driver dropped me off at a gas station on the outskirts of the city.
I stood at the entrance, under the tin roof, not knowing what to do.
Then I saw the truck.
An old red Volvo, loaded with bales of wool, parked next to the pumps.
A dark-skinned man with a short beard and broad shoulders climbed down from the cab, a thermos in his hand.
He looked at me.
He stopped.
He looked at me again, carefully, like someone recognizing a face he's seen in dreams.
"Mariluz Paredes," he said.
My blood ran cold.
"How do you know me?"
"I'm heading to Arequipa. If you want, I'll take you."
He paused.
"I know who you are. And I know what kind of man is waiting for you at the altar tomorrow."
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