Pictures of You

Chapter 69

the PRESENT

69

Evie

My dad keeps everything , and it strikes me that he probably has a copy of my wedding video stashed somewhere in the house. I leave Drew, my brother-in-law , who I just kissed , on the deck and drag Bree inside by the hand.

“I can’t believe he kept another secret from me,” I whisper once we’re in the living room. “And let me kiss him.” And kissed me back. Like that.

“ You kissed him ?”

It was incredible. For a few delirious seconds, I slipped into a world of hope. Life wasn’t just a confusing jumble of memory fragments and odd behavior. It was connected . I felt like, even if I couldn’t remember my past, I’d caught a glimpse into some kind of delicious future.

But then that was confiscated too.

“Obviously, I shouldn’t have.”

“If you had your memory back, you’d know I was always Team Drew.”

She looks alight with something, but I don’t have time for this. I kneel on the floor in front of the TV cabinet, swing the doors open, and search through the mess. Honestly, it’s like sorting through the National Film and Sound Archive. Old recordings of Yes Minister on VHS from the eighties. Columbo . Fawlty Towers . I have amnesia and even I know about streaming services! What’s Dad’s excuse?

Right near the back, I find a stash of family videos and DVDs. All the footage he took of me when I was little. Dance performances. Soccer matches. Band concerts. It brings tears to my eyes, thinking about just how loved I am. Or was.

My fingers find a DVD case with a photo of Oliver and me on the cover. The wedding dress is no surprise—I saw it in the slideshow at the funeral. I can see how I arrived at the choice. It looks vintage in style, but it’s not authentic. It’s a modern take on the drop-waist 1920s gowns I always thought were so elegant. Dripping with lace and pearls. And hope …

I slip the disc into the DVD player, grab the remote, and sit back on the couch beside Bree, my thumb trembling as I press play. It’s a typically mushy production. Baby photos of us both as an introduction. Pictures from school. Photos of Oliver that I recognize from his funeral slideshow too—muddy on a sports field, wielding a shiny gold trophy. On stage in his fancy school blazer with blue-and-gold piping at a debate. In a cap and gown at a university graduation. Me in the backyard in Newcastle, sunlight streaming through the trees, chasing butterflies … That was always my mum’s favorite photo of me as a kid, and I long to be that carefree girl again.

I fast-forward through this walk down memory lane, and through some footage of everyone arriving at the church. It’s glaringly obvious at this speed that one side of the congregation is full and the other very sparse. I know I was never the type to have a huge bunch of friends, but surely I had some ? My parents are there, obviously—well, I can see Mum. Maybe Dad walked me down the aisle—such archaic patriarchal symbolism. Teenage me was never going to allow that kind of thing in my future.

I slow the footage down when it gets to the procession into the church. Some strange woman walks in before me, in a bridesmaid dress. “Who’s that?” I ask Bree.

“Oliver’s sister.”

“But where are you?”

She takes my hand. Was she not invited?

I was already staggering from the idea of her not being the bridesmaid, but she wasn’t even there? It’s starting to dawn on me that maybe I haven’t been abandoned after all. Perhaps I was the one doing the abandoning. And if so, doesn’t it speak volumes for them that they’re here with me now?

The videographer has captured that classic moment when the groom first turns to see his partner at the foot of the aisle. Oliver was an incredibly good-looking man. Wildly good-looking. Surely he could have had any girl he wanted. An awful, anxious feeling begins to well in the pit of my stomach. Inferiority. Undeservedness.

I’m your best bet, Evie. Nobody else will ever love you like me.

Where did those words spring from? My stomach drops.

I focus on the screen. I can read my own face, even behind a veil. That smile is fake. That’s fear in my eyes. I must have known even then that this marriage wasn’t right for me, so why did I go through with it?

I feel sick as I watch myself promise to love him. Can’t anyone see the cry for help in my eyes?

“Until death do us part …” I promise. Well, it’s done that, now, hasn’t it? And, like clockwork, I seem to have stopped loving him. This soon after the funeral, I think a widow is meant to be screaming into the void, aching for her love to be returned.

It’s irrelevant, anyway. I suspect I stopped loving Oliver long before our car crash. Perhaps even before the wedding, the way I look in this footage. What I’m watching on the screen is not the fairy tale it’s striving to be, and no amount of cleverly put together pew decorations or Instagram-worthy color-coding could salvage that. I’m gobsmacked nobody picked it up at the time. How much of my life was a lie?

I can’t watch any more of this. My stomach is churning. I fast-forward through to the reception instead, hoping to catch a glimpse of anyone important to me.

But that’s when I land on the speeches.