The Last Wife on Mars

Chapter One The Groom Who Missed Mars

Chapter One

The Groom Who Missed Mars

SADIE

Three minutes before my fiancé ended our engagement, I was explaining to twelve million people why getting married on Mars was not a cry for help.

“It’s a destination wedding,” I told the camera, smiling beneath enough pink light to make my teeth look sponsored. “The destination is simply farther away than most sensible people would choose.”

The interviewer laughed. The live viewer count jumped again on the monitor beside her.

Behind us, the private launch terminal had been transformed into a luxury bridal fever dream.

Pink roses climbed the boarding arch. Champagne floated inside clear magnetic globes.

A ten-foot banner declared THE LAST WIFE ON MARS in lettering large enough to be read from orbit, which felt like an excessive level of commitment from a sign.

My commitment was represented by a pink promotional ring the size of a throat lozenge.

My actual engagement ring was on my left hand.

For the moment.

“And Trent?” the interviewer asked. Her name was Mara Chen, and I knew from three years of media events that she could smell trouble before anyone else admitted it had entered the building. “Is he the sensible one?”

I glanced toward the edge of the set.

Trent stood beside the boarding gate in a cream travel suit selected by the campaign stylist. He was handsome in the effortless, symmetrical way that required two hours of effort and a lighting consultation. A producer adjusted his microphone. Trent caught me looking and gave me a small smile.

It arrived a second late. That was the first thing I noticed. The second was the absence of his carry-on.

“Trent is the charming one,” I said.

His smile tightened.

Mara followed my gaze. Her own smile stayed professionally bright, but one eyebrow moved. It was a tiny motion, almost nothing.

I had built a career on almost nothing.

Bellwether, the travel magazine my mother had started at our kitchen table, survived by noticing what polished brochures hoped no one would.

The service fee hidden below the booking button.

The staff door positioned where guests would never see workers sitting down.

The luxury resort that called its smallest room intimate because prison cell sounded hostile.

I noticed details for a living.

Trent had no carry-on.

“Come join us,” Mara called.

The live comments accelerated across the monitor. THERE HE IS. MARS GROOM LOOKS NERVOUS. THE RING IS PINK I NEED IT.

WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE HE’S ABOUT TO CONFESS TO A MURDER.

I almost laughed at the last one. Then Trent stepped onto the set without touching me.

He always touched me on camera.

A hand at my waist. A kiss to my temple. Some small claim that looked affectionate in a square video frame.

This time he stopped eighteen inches away.

Mara looked between us. “We were just discussing which of you is more sensible.”

“Sadie,” Trent said.

He had used that tone twice before. Once when he told me he had lost a sponsored suitcase containing every piece of clothing I owned for a ten-day assignment. Once when he admitted he had invited a production crew to my mother’s memorial garden because grief performed well in autumn light.

My smile became something I could have used to slice fruit.

“What did you do?”

The producer behind Mara went still. Trent glanced at the nearest camera, then at the viewer count. He knew exactly how many people were watching.

“I think we owe everyone honesty,” he said.

“That sentence has never improved a woman’s day.”

The comments became a vertical blur.

Mara shifted one step back. It was the movement of a professional who understood she was no longer conducting an interview. She was standing near weather.

Trent drew a careful breath. “Sadie and I have decided not to go forward with the wedding.”

The terminal disappeared.

Not literally. The roses remained. The magnetic champagne continued drifting in cheerful little orbits. Someone’s bracelet chimed near the boarding desk.

But for one clean second, I saw none of it.

I saw the empty chair beside my mother’s hospital bed where my father should have been.

I saw six Bellwether employees gathered around a bakery cake when we signed the Mars sponsorship.

I saw my sister Lila crying into gold frosting because the advance meant we could keep everyone through another year.

Then I saw Trent.

“No,” I said.

His expression softened with rehearsed regret. “Sadie.”

“No, we did not decide that.”

Mara’s eyes closed briefly. Somewhere behind the camera, a producer whispered a word that would not survive the network delay.

Trent lowered his voice, which only made the microphone pick him up more intimately. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“That must be why you scheduled it for maximum viewership.”

His face changed. Not much. Just enough for me to know I had hit the truth.

He looked toward the comments.

I did not.

“LunaLive offered me my own residency,” he said. “A solo project at the Glass Moon. They want to follow the first creator to spend thirty nights broadcasting from the new lunar resort.”

“And they required you to be single?”

“They required me to be available.”

There were a hundred ways to interpret that sentence. Every one of them was insulting.

The pink ring on my right hand flashed beneath the studio lights. A little resin planet sat where a diamond should have been. Trent and I had laughed when the campaign team presented the rings that morning.

At least I had thought we were both laughing.

“When did they make the offer?” I asked.

“Sadie, this is not the place.”

“You selected the place.”

Mara made a small sound that might have been a cough hiding a prayer.

Trent’s gaze darted toward the producer. “Two weeks ago.”

Two weeks.

I had spent two weeks finishing advance copy for Bellwether, approving daily broadcast topics, having my outdoor suit altered, and pretending not to be terrified of sleeping farther from home than any Bell woman had ever traveled.

He had spent them negotiating the market value of leaving me.

I folded my hands in front of me. If I let either one hang loose, it might shake. “Did you sign?”

“Yesterday.”

The answer landed quietly.

That was almost worse.

There had been breakfast this morning. Coffee, eggs, a kiss on my cheek while I checked the launch schedule. He had asked whether I thought his cream jacket washed him out.

I had told him it made him look expensive.

Apparently, LunaLive agreed.

“I care about you,” he said. “But the Mars campaign is your dream, not mine.”

“The Mars campaign was never my dream.”

That was the first completely honest sentence anyone had spoken on the set.

I turned toward the camera because it was easier than looking at him. “For the record, my dreams involve a solvent magazine, fair cancellation policies, and hotels that do not charge twenty-eight dollars for water.”

The viewer count climbed past thirteen million.

Trent’s jaw tightened. “This is what I mean. Everything becomes an article with you.”

“Everything became content with you.”

He flinched.

For one mean, satisfying second, I was glad.

Then I hated that I was glad. I hated the cameras for catching it. I hated that my private heartbreak had already acquired good lighting and a reaction clip.

Most of all, I hated the hot pressure behind my eyes.

I would cry. I knew that. There was no shame in crying because the man I planned to marry had traded our future for a solo sponsorship.

But I would not do it beneath a banner he had helped choose.

I reached up and unclipped my microphone.

The producer stepped forward. “Sadie, we’re still live.”

“I know.”

I set the microphone on Mara’s little glass table. Then I slid off my actual engagement ring.

Trent’s gaze dropped to it.

I did not throw it. My mother had raised me to respect jewelry and distrust dramatic gestures with poor resale value.

I placed it beside the microphone.

“The campaign ring belongs to Bellwether until someone confirms otherwise,” I said. “This one belongs to you.”

“Can we talk privately?”

“We could have done that two weeks ago.”

I walked off the set.

No one stopped me.

People moved aside with the startled speed reserved for celebrities, brides, and women who looked as if they might become legally interesting.

I passed the roses. I passed our matched luggage, both cases still standing beneath the boarding sign. I passed a display model of the Solstice Villa, complete with a tiny bed under a glass ceiling and two tiny figures holding hands on the terrace.

The female figure had been painted in my red travel dress.

I turned it facedown.

The terminal’s service corridor was blessedly gray and undecorated. The door shut behind me, muting the interview set to a distant murmur.

My phone vibrated so hard it nearly escaped my hand. LILA LILA LILA

PRIYA NAIR, MARS HONEYMOON RESORT LILA UNKNOWN LILA

I answered my sister.

“I’m fine,” I said.

Lila inhaled sharply. “That is a deranged opening statement.”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

Mine did not. Not yet.

“I am upright. I am dressed. I have not committed a felony.”

“I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“You’re at Bellwether.”

“I know where I am, Sadie.”

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. “The shuttle boards in fourteen minutes.”

Silence.

We both understood the problem.

Bellwether had already spent the sponsorship advance.

Not recklessly. We had paid salaries, printer deposits, archive storage, overdue licensing fees, and the cost of keeping a forty-two-year-old independent travel magazine alive in an industry that considered independent a poetic synonym for dying.

The contract required a couple to complete the residency.

I was no longer half of one.

“Don’t think about the money,” Lila said too quickly.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were. I heard your spreadsheet voice.”

My eyes burned harder.

“I need five minutes,” I said.

“Take ten.”

“We do not have ten.”

“For once in your life, stop converting panic into a schedule.”

I opened my eyes.

At the far end of the corridor, a man stood beneath a plain EXIT sign.

Beckett Vale did not look like a man caught inside a public catastrophe. He looked like a man who had received disappointing quarterly numbers and intended to discipline them.

He was taller than he appeared in interviews. Dark suit. White shirt. No tie. An expensive face arranged into controlled displeasure.

I recognized that displeasure.

Four years earlier, I had reviewed his first Earth resort and described it as designed by a man who had never relaxed.

He had sent Bellwether a six-page response.

I had published two paragraphs under the heading THE OWNER WOULD LIKE A WORD.

“I have to go,” I told Lila.

“Why?”

“A very expensive man is walking toward me.”

Beckett stopped several feet away.

Even in a crisis, he respected personal space. I resented noticing.

“Ms. Bell.”

“Mr. Vale.”

His gaze moved over my face, not lingering long enough to become pity. “Are you hurt?”

The question surprised me.

“Not in a way your insurance covers.”

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. It disappeared before I could call it a smile.

Behind him, the service door opened. A producer hurried into the corridor with Mara at her heels.

“Mr. Vale,” the producer said. “We need a statement. The network is asking whether the residency is canceled.”

Beckett continued looking at me.

“Is it?” I asked.

He had every reason to say yes.

The groom was gone. The live audience had watched the campaign become a cautionary tale. Somewhere, sponsors were already drafting emails that began with unfortunately.

Beckett turned toward the waiting camera.

“No,” he said.

The producer blinked. “No?”

Beckett stepped past me and into the frame I had just escaped.

“The Mars Honeymoon Residency will continue.”