Chapter 4: Cancellations
I went back to our apartment on Monday morning, while Jake was at work. I needed Biscuit, my laptop, and my scrubs. I also needed the wedding binder, the white three-ring one with Morrow–Hart on the spine in gold letters that I’d made at a craft store in January like a fool.
I sat on the floor of our bedroom with the binder open and my phone in my hand, and I started at page one.
“Magnolia Hall, this is Tessa.”
“Tessa. It’s Emily Hart.”
A breath. Then, gently: “I’ve been hoping you’d call. Are you okay?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m sure.”
She didn’t try to talk me out of it. She explained the deposit was gone, and then she said something I’ve thought about a lot since: “For what it’s worth, I’ve done this job for nineteen years. The brides who cancel are never the ones I worry about.”
The caterer was kind. The florist cried. The photographer, a man named Dez with a voice like warm gravel, said, “I’m keeping the deposit because that’s my policy, but I’m sending you a credit for a family shoot. Someday. With whoever you want in the picture, even if it’s just you and your dog.”
The band didn’t call back. The cake shop asked, very carefully, if I still wanted the tasting box I’d paid for. I said no. Then I said wait. Then I said yes, raspberry only.
Every call peeled something off me. By two o’clock I felt raw and light at the same time, like skin after a sunburn. Biscuit lay with his head on my foot the whole time, like he knew this was a job that needed a witness.
My wedding dress was hanging on the back of the closet door in its long white garment bag, where I’d hung it two weeks ago so I could look at it every morning. I didn’t unzip it. I just looked at it for a long time.
Then I called my grandmother.
I’d been dreading that call the most. I told her everything. The cake. The photo. Since June. My mother. The dress she’d paid for.
She was quiet for a long time. I could hear her parrot, Lucky, squawking in the background in Tucson.
“Emmy,” she finally said. “In 1961 I married a man in a borrowed dress, and I found out on my honeymoon he had a girl in Phoenix. I stayed forty-one years because everybody said I’d paid too much to leave.” A pause. “Don’t you dare stay for a dress.“
I laughed so hard I cried, and then just cried.
I texted Jake one sentence: The wedding is canceled. I’m moving out Saturday.
He didn’t reply. Not for hours. I packed four boxes and drove them to Priya’s, and I thought maybe that was it. Maybe that was how nine years ended. A text. Silence.
At 12:40 a.m. someone pounded on Priya’s door.
I knew the knock. I’d heard it every time he forgot his keys.
I opened the door halfway and kept my hand on the edge of it. Jake stood on the doormat under the porch light with the rain coming down behind him, soaked through, his charcoal quarter-zip dark with water, his phone clutched in his hand. His eyes were red.
“Em,” he said. “Please. I need you to hear this from me before you hear it from anyone else.”
He held the phone up toward me. The screen showed a black-and-white image, grainy and curved. I’m a pediatric nurse. I knew exactly what I was looking at before he said it.
“Kayla’s pregnant,” Jake said. “But Em, I swear to God, I still want to marry you.“
