17
17
SOMETHING OLD
E verything was going off without a hitch. I observed all of the proceedings coming and going from my PAC, in my make-shift office, in the Presidential Suite of the St. Regis Hotel. I was going over the checklist while I closed out the last of my dossiers. Dom Perignon was pre-ordered for our room—I didn’t want her drinking Cristal. Ever again. I scanned the banquet hall as great bouquets of long-stemmed red roses began marching in. She had wanted pink tulips, but this was a classic black-tie affair. Black and white. Roses fit better with the theme. Now I wondered if me taking over the wedding plans had set her off, or just escalated whatever it was that was bothering her, or had no effect whatsoever. She seemed rather blasé about the whole thing now, easily deferring to my judgment. I realized that was another error in judgement on my part. I should have allowed her some of her ideas, some of her past that made up who she was.
I could make up for that lapse, so I’d already made a few phone calls and last-minute changes to the wedding. Making it feel like something she’d had a hand in. I should have done that to begin with, it’s just, my tastes were more sophisticated. My fiancée came from a tatty trailer on the lonesome prairies of nowhere. A Walmart world upbringing. She had no taste . . . other than in men. A pang—my little joke backfiring because I knew I wasn’t her preference.
Fucking Davenport . His shadow seemed to loom over the whole day. Was that why she looked so miserable? Was she secretly pining away for her first love? Ridiculous. He was long gone. The amount of security attached to this evening’s big event did not escape me.
Weston must think I’m completely obtuse. The wedding announcements were obviously supposed to be some kind of enticement to lure him in. Not that he was coming back. However, I smiled like a motherfucker for the picture, just in case he happened to run across it. Dude would have to be an idiot to come back now. For a girl he barely knew. I knew her way better. I’m the one who protected her identity from The Academy in the first place. And I’m the one who’d been with her for two years. I’m the one who got things done for her. Who saved her life. Who manned up to marry her. And the one who would take her virginity and father her child.
After downing the last of my energy drink, I crushed the can in my fist. He’d better not show his pretty face around here. Not that he would. Ridiculous. I tossed the crumpled tin in the trash. She was no more than a distant memory to him. I’m sure he was rolling in civilian babes on some beach somewhere. A real surfer-dude, that Davenport. Scour the beaches would be my advice to the powers-that-be still searching for him. But the truth was: he could stay lost forever and I’d never miss him.
I inhaled, trying to focus on finishing the last of these reports so I’d have tomorrow free and clear. This wedding had turned into The Academy’s new obsession. Cadets always acted like thy weren’t down with the people, but truth to be known: they secretly loved participating in civilian traditions. We probably acted a lot like those Jehovah Witness kids who were never allowed to go trick or treating, so when they grow up, Halloween becomes their favorite holiday. And they go overboard with the decorations and eat so much candy they puke. My bachelor party was a lot like that. I had to endure a night of shots with the guys while slutty girls in policemen outfits stripped for me, then gyrated up and down in their G-strings as if their lives depended on giving me a hard on. They accomplished their goal, but the party had been a bust for me. All I could focus on was the Katie-Kat’s face when she’d kissed me. Like it was something she had to do, like a training exercise or something.
Burned me up. Meanwhile, she was cold as ice.
Did somebody tell her about Lizzie? I doubted it. I kept it on the down low. And nobody would be that stupid. She probably suspected though. Even though she was still na?ve. Girls just had a sixth sense about these things. And she literally had a sixth sense. Holy shitcookies! That was it—she knew I’d been cheating. My heart dropped anchor to my gut. I set aside the second half of my chicken sandwich. Nothing I could do about it now.
I checked my watch. T-minus four hours. I wondered what she was up to. I kind of felt a little sick not seeing her now. Like I needed a little reassurance she wouldn’t stand me up. But I thought she probably needed some space. I’d booked a spa day for her here, which she politely declined to spend more time with her brothers. Too bad. I specifically asked for the Brazilian for her. That’s the way I preferred my babes.
Oh, well. Best laid plans. She wasn’t like all the others anyway.
I blew out a long stream of air. Fuck! I’d made an error somewhere along the way. Overestimated her forgiving qualities. Underestimated her ability to figure things out. Something. I tapped out a rhythm with the hotel pen. What could I do to begin making it up to her? To thaw her out?
Maybe she was just missing her mother on her wedding day? That was it. I felt like I’d finally hit upon the grievous error. That would explain the coldness. If it was the cheating, then surely she would’ve boiled over into a rage by now. No, she seemed sad or something. Made a lot of sense—she loved and looked up to her mother and still grieved for her. Her binding promise to her to take care of her brothers was all-encompassing. The code she lived by. And she knew that I loathed her mother for what she did to my father, and I let it show. That was my fatal mistake.
She was marrying someone who hated her mother, and that felt wrong to her. I grabbed my keys and wallet. I knew just the thing to give her. None of this “something borrowed” “something blue” bullshit. No. This was “something old.” Something I’d held on to. Something my father gave to her mother. The thing that allowed him to track her to New Mexico. The thing I’d stripped from her before she arrived. In Secret. I’d removed it from around her neck while she was still conked out in the back of the SUV and kept it in a bank vault off campus, along with her cotton panties, and her bloody Tree Hugger T-shirt. I went to go get it, a wedding present for my future wife.
I was a sick individual. Maybe my fiancée had intuited this?