Chapter 3 - THE WEDDING THAT NEVER HAPPENED
By noon, the Hawthorne Hotel was in chaos.
The florist had already arranged four thousand white roses.
The musicians were rehearsing.
The wedding cake stood in a refrigerated room.
Two hundred and forty guests were expected.
And the bride had disappeared.
Ethan called Clare seventeen times.
Then twenty-three.
Then thirty-one.
She didn't answer.
Finally, he called her mother.
“Margaret, have you spoken to Clare?”
Her mother sounded confused.
“No. Why?”
Ethan swallowed.
“She left.”
Silence.
“What do you mean, she left?”
“She canceled the wedding.”
Margaret gasped.
“What did you do?”
Ethan hesitated.
“Nothing.”
“Ethan.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Vanessa borrowed the bridal limousine.”
Silence.
Then Margaret asked:
“Was Clare in it?”
“No.”
“Where was she?”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“At her apartment.”
Margaret's voice became dangerously quiet.
“You left my daughter standing outside in her wedding dress?”
“It wasn't like that.”
“Then explain how it was.”
Ethan couldn't.
Because for the first time, hearing the story aloud made it sound exactly as cruel as it had been.
At four o'clock, the wedding coordinator approached him.
“Mr. Whitmore, we need a decision.”
Ethan stared.
“About what?”
“The ceremony.”
He looked toward the ballroom.
The flowers.
The chairs.
The aisle Clare would never walk down.
Then he whispered:
May you like
“Cancel it.”
And just like that, the wedding he'd spent eighteen months planning disappeared.
