Wedding Day: My Fiancé Put Another Woman in My Wedding Car novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Text He Sent Himself
The night before the wedding Claire finds Preston in her new bed with Tiffany, drops her ring and texts his uncle that she accepts; he writes back that she should wear the dress.
At my rehearsal dinner, forty guests stood up with their glasses, and my phone buzzed in my lap.
The toast was for me.
Preston's mother was giving it, in the long dining room of the family mansion by the sea.
"To Claire," she said. "Who is joining this family tomorrow, and who will make it better."
I smiled at her and looked down at the screen.
The text came from a number I didn't know.
"Your fiancé isn't sleeping. Go to the new house and look at the bed you bought."
My chair scraped back before I decided to stand.
Preston's seat at the head of the table was empty.
He had left an hour earlier, kissing my forehead on his way out.
"I need eight hours," he had told me. "Big day tomorrow."
I leaned toward his mother while the guests drank.
"Where is Preston?"
"Resting, dear." Her smile did not move. "He's a nervous boy. Don't go bothering him tonight."
She said it too fast, and she said it without asking why I wanted to know.
I put my napkin on the table and went to find my maid of honor.
Jo was in the hallway, eating a bread roll over her bridesmaid dress.
I showed her the phone.
She read it, swallowed, and went for her keys.
"I'm driving," she said. "And I'm filming."
"Jo."
"Claire, if this is a prank I'll apologize on camera. If it isn't, you'll want the footage."
We took her green pickup down the hill to the new house.
It was a white colonial on Harbor Lane that Preston and I had closed on in April.
His car was in the driveway.
A second car sat beside it, a small silver one with a Providence dealer frame.
I didn't recognize it.
The front door was unlocked.
I walked up the stairs with Jo a few steps behind me and her phone held up.
The bedroom door stood open.
I had bought that bed myself, a walnut frame with a plain headboard, because Preston said he didn't care what we slept on.
He was on it.
So was Tiffany Lund, his first love, the woman he told me was only an old friend from his college years.
Her red-gold hair was across my new pillow, and her dress lay on the floor beside his belt.
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Preston sat up and said my name, softly, the way he did when he'd forgotten something at the store.
He took a robe from the chair and laid it over Tiffany's shoulders, gently.
Then he pulled on his trousers and stood.
"I sent you the text," he said.
I stared at him.
"You what?"
"I sent it. From the phone I use for her." He picked a cigarette from the nightstand and lit it, in the room I had paid to have painted. "Better you see it from me than hear it from somebody at the church."
There were marks on his neck and across his chest.
Tiffany said nothing.
She stayed under the robe and kept her face turned toward the window.
"Men like to have their fun before they settle," Preston said. "It's normal, Claire. You'll understand when you've been married a while."
I heard Jo's breath behind me, and I did not turn around.
"Tomorrow I'll be faithful," he said. "I promise you that."
He drew on the cigarette and breathed out.
"Relax. The wedding I promised you is still happening. I'll keep Tiff somewhere else once we're married. She won't touch your position as Mrs. Aldridge."
Out in the driveway a car door slammed.
Headlights crossed the ceiling.
Preston glanced at the window, and so did Tiffany.
Her whole body went still under the robe.
She turned her face to the wall.
"Don't mind that," Preston said. "That's just Nate. He drives by to check on the houses. He never says her name."
I didn't ask what he meant.
I looked at the man I had planned to marry in fifteen hours, standing over my bed in his cigarette smoke.
Then I smiled at him.
It was the first real smile I had given him all week.
He relaxed, because he thought I was giving in.
I slid the engagement ring off my finger, a cold, heavy diamond his mother had picked out.
I held it over the floorboards, and I let go.
It hit the wood and rolled.
Preston watched it spin to a stop against his shoe.
"Claire."
I took out my phone.
Three weeks ago, his uncle Nathaniel had sent me a message I never answered.
It said: "If you ever need a way out that keeps your father's store, marry me instead. No answer needed until you've seen it yourself."
I had thought it was cruel.
I opened it and typed.
"I accept your proposal."
I pressed send.
Preston saw my face and laughed. "Who are you texting?"
"Your family," I said.
My father's hardware store sat on land the Aldridges owned, and Margaret smiled about that lease every Christmas.
If I was going to leave this house, I was not leaving the family with it.
I walked out past Jo and down the stairs and into the cool dark of the yard.
My phone buzzed before I reached the truck.
Nathaniel Aldridge had written back.
"Wear the dress. Walk down the aisle. Don't stop until I stand."
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