The Wedding She Survived novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Door
Five years after he walked out on their wedding, Killian kneels on Willa's porch and her son says the man has his eyes. She steps out and shuts the door, and Killian says he was told she took two million dollars.
Five years ago, I stood at the church doors in my wedding dress and waited for my groom.
A hundred and eighty guests watched me do it.
The organist played the processional three times.
Killian Draycott had walked out through the vestibule and driven away, and nobody could tell me why.
I was four months pregnant, and I had planned to tell him at the altar.
My mother took my arm and walked me out the side door before the organ started a fourth time.
On Monday the city paper ran our engagement photo under the headline: Jilted.
Four months later I gave birth to triplets, six weeks early, with my mother holding my hand and nobody else in the room.
My mother paid off her mortgage that October with the last of my father's life insurance, and I moved back into her house.
Now the triplets were four, and tonight was a Tuesday, and the boys had spaghetti sauce up to their ears.
The doorbell rang at seven.
My mother looked out the front window and stepped back from it.
"Go and see, baby," she said. "I'll keep the kids in the kitchen."
I opened the door.
Killian stood on my porch.
He was thinner, with gray at his temples, and he held a folded letter in both hands.
"Willa," he said. His voice was hoarse.
"Get off my porch."
"My father died in August," he said. "He left me this. Please give me five minutes."
"You had one afternoon, and you used it to leave."
"I know."
"A hundred and eighty people watched me wait, Killian."
My eyes were burning, and I hated that they were.
Across the street, our neighbor stopped his mower and stood there with one hand on the handle.
Two of his grown sons had come out onto the lawn to watch.
Killian saw them too, and he didn't care.
"Get up," I said. "You are not doing this on my mat."
"Then hear me out."
He went down on his knees on my welcome mat.
"I will say it in front of the whole street if you want," he said. "I was wrong. I have been wrong for five years, and I am begging you to hear me."
"Mommy, why are you crying?"
Sebastian had slipped out of the kitchen and pressed himself against my leg, a fork still in his fist.
"I'm not crying, baby. Go back to Grandma."
He didn't move.
He was looking at the man on the mat.
"Mommy," Sebastian said, "that man has my eyes."
Killian's mouth opened, and nothing came out.
Sebastian's eyes were gray with a dark ring around the edge.
Killian's were exactly the same.
He got up slowly and held onto the porch rail.
"How old is he?" he asked me.
"I'm four," Sebastian said. "Poppy and Finn are four too. They're in the kitchen."
Behind the glass of the kitchen window, two small faces pressed against it, sauce on both.
Killian looked at them.
Then he looked at me.
"Three?" he said.
"Three."
"Willa, are they mine?"
I didn't answer, because he had just answered it himself, looking at his son.
"What is his whole name?" he asked. "Please. I need to hear it."
I picked Sebastian up, kissed the top of his head, and carried him to the kitchen door.
"Mom," I said. "Keep them in there. Don't come out, whatever you hear."
"Of course, baby," Maureen Gleeson said, and she took him from me and shut the door.
So I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the front door closed behind me.
"You get one minute," I said, "and you say it quietly. They don't know you exist."
"I didn't know they existed."
"You knew where I lived, and you never came once in five years."
"I called the first week," he said. "Your number was disconnected."
"I changed it when the reporters started calling."
He held out the folded letter. "My father wrote this before he died. It says he lied."
"I don't want anything your father wrote."
"Willa, please. I didn't know you were pregnant."
"I was going to tell you at the altar," I said. "I had the words written on a card."
His face crumpled.
I didn't let it move me.
"You took two million dollars from your father to leave me in front of everyone I knew," I said. "That's what you took, Killian."
He stared at me.
"Two million dollars?" he said.
The mower started again across the street and then cut out.
"I never took a cent from my father," Killian said slowly. "I was told you took it."
"What?"
"A man showed me your signature, Willa. He said you'd accepted two million dollars to call off the wedding, and you were already gone."
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