The Night Before We Got Married novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Open Call

Romy bares her scars for the first time in seven years at the Sterling's open call, under the eyes of the woman who set the fire, and Desmond walks down the aisle to collect her for the wedding she skipped.

Goldie made cinnamon toast.

She sawed the bread thick, buttered it to the edges, and dumped sugar on it from a height.

"Eat," she said. "Then tell me who I'm killing."

I sat at her kitchen table in her old flannel robe. My hair was still damp from the night.

Her last paycheck from the Sterling was stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pear.

Marigold Penney. Costume Department.

"Delphine," I said.

Goldie put the knife down.

"Delphine Sorrell. Who used to borrow my good scissors and not bring them back."

"She was in his arms last night. In his shirt."

Goldie said a word I'd never heard her use, and she'd used most of them.

"And the fire," I said. "She set it."

Goldie went very still.

She was sixty-four, small and round, with a silver bob and her reading glasses on a beaded chain.

The pincushion was already on her wrist, at seven in the morning.

She sat down across from me.

"How do you know that, baby?"

I couldn't tell her a voice in my head had told me.

"I just know."

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she reached over and took my left hand, the scarred side, and held it on the table between us.

"Then I believe you," she said.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

At 9:30 a.m., the time we were supposed to stand in front of a clerk at city hall, it was still buzzing.

Goldie turned it face down without asking.

"Forty-one missed calls," she said. "All Desmond. Should I answer and tell him where to put it?"

"Leave it."

"Host," said the flat voice in my head. "Twenty-nine days, fourteen hours remaining."

"Thank you," I said out loud. "Very helpful."

Goldie raised one eyebrow.

"Talking to myself," I said.

"You've earned it."

She pushed a flyer across the table. It had a coffee ring on it.

THE STERLING THEATER. THE GLASS SISTERS. OPEN CALL FOR THE ROLE OF MARA. TODAY, 11 A.M.

"I wasn't going to show you this," she said. "Mara's the burned sister. Delphine plays the pretty one."

I read it twice.

I hadn't stood on a stage in seven years.

I had twenty-nine days left.

"Host," said the System. "This activity does not affect your exit."

"Good," I said.

Goldie stood up.

"Is that a yes?"

"That's a yes."

She went into the sewing room and came back with a black top on a hanger.

It had no sleeves. It had no collar.

She held it up and waited.

For seven years she'd sewn me high collars and long cuffs. She'd never once asked me to wear anything else.

"You don't have to," she said.

I took off the robe and put it on.

The air touched my left shoulder.

It felt like stepping into cold water.

The Sterling's lobby smelled like fresh paint and sawdust.

Forty women sat in folding chairs along the wall with headshots on their knees.

Every one of them looked at my arm.

I signed my name on the clipboard and sat down with my left side to the room.

"Romy?"

The voice came from the auditorium doors.

Breathy and sweet.

Delphine Sorrell walked toward me in a cream sweater, her honey-blond hair in loose waves.

She held a paper cup of coffee in her right hand. The perfect one.

"Oh my God. It's really you."

She hugged me before I could stand up.

"I'm sitting in on casting," she said, loud enough for the whole row. "They want chemistry. Isn't that funny?"

"Hilarious," I said.

She looked down at my shoulder, and her big blue eyes went wet.

"Honey. Are you sure about this?"

"I'm sure."

"It's just..."

She touched her own throat, gently.

"The lights get so hot up there. I'd hate for you to have a bad memory. In front of everyone."

The room went silent.

"Tilney," the stage manager called. "Romy Tilney."

I stood up.

"Excuse me, Delphine. I have a bad memory to go have."

The stage was new. The boards were pale and smelled of varnish.

Somewhere behind that back wall was where Dressing Room B used to be.

The director sat in the fifth row with a legal pad.

She was a woman in her fifties with gray hair cut short and no patience in her face.

Delphine slid into the seat next to her and crossed her legs.

"Whenever you're ready," the director said.

I walked to center.

Then I turned my left side to the house.

The scars from my jaw to my elbow, under the work lights, for anyone who wanted to look.

Mara's monologue is the one where she tells her sister she isn't sorry for living.

I didn't need the page.

My voice went to the back wall and came back to me.

I'd forgotten it could do that.

When I finished, nobody moved.

The director didn't write anything down.

Delphine's coffee cup had stopped halfway to her mouth.

Then a door opened at the back of the house.

Footsteps came down the center aisle, slow and even.

Black shirt. Black hair combed back. The prayer beads wrapped on his left wrist again, a hundred and eight of them, restrung.

Desmond stopped at the edge of the stage and looked up at me.

He didn't look at my arm.

He never had.

"You missed our appointment," he said. "Get in the car."

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