My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Brunch

Hugh read the post over Bonnie's shoulder.

His jaw went tight under the beard.

"I'll call my lawyer."

"No," I said.

"Edie, that's defamation. She cut the video."

"And your lawyer will write a letter, and she'll post the letter, and eleven thousand brides will read 'the stalker's rich boyfriend is suing me.'" I took the phone from Bonnie and scrolled. "She doesn't care about letters. She cares about rooms."

"Rooms?"

"She does everything in front of people. That's how she wins." I looked up. "So I go in front of the same people."

Bonnie was already searching.

"Tacoma Brides Monthly Brunch," she read. "Third Sunday. A hotel ballroom downtown. A hundred and fifty brides, vendor tables, mimosas." She scrolled further and her eyebrows shot up. "Oh, you're going to love this. Guest of honor this month. 'A real bride's story of courage.'"

She turned the phone around.

It was Shayla, in a soft-focus photo, holding a bouquet.

I spent the next week sewing.

Not for brides. For my mother.

Every night after close I sat at the cutting table and rebuilt the bodice of her dress one panel at a time. New satin where the knife went through, matched so close you had to tilt it to the light. Two hundred and twelve seed pearls, sewn back one by one.

I didn't sew the last panel shut.

I left the slash showing. A long ragged line down the center of the front, with the pearls stopping at its edges.

On Sunday morning, the ballroom smelled like orange juice and hairspray.

Bonnie wheeled my mother's dress in on a dress form, under a sheet.

Heads turned at the door.

Someone whispered, "That's her. That's the hammer lady."

A woman with a lanyard and a clipboard came rushing over. The group admin.

"You can't be here," she hissed.

"I bought a ticket," I said.

On the stage, Shayla was already halfway through her story.

She wore pale pink, her hair in a soft wave, a hand on her heart.

"And the hardest part," she was saying, "is that I was trying to help her. I really was. She's clearly not well. But when someone comes to your home with a hammer…"

She saw me.

She stopped mid-sentence.

I pulled the sheet off the dress form.

The room went quiet in pieces, table by table, as people saw it.

Ivory satin, long sleeves, a pearl bodice. And straight down the front, a slash from collar to waist.

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