Chapter 74
74
Evie
Bree unmutes the TV and is about to eject the DVD, which has been playing a blank screen for the last fifteen minutes, but then it bursts into more footage. The first shot is of people’s feet. The camera operator is walking through the crowd and getting the viewfinder lined up to focus on the church, and then it cuts out. What is this, the blooper reel? There’s another shot where the sound isn’t right and then one that’s out of focus, taken before the service started, of people arriving for the ceremony. They must have included this raw footage by mistake.
“I wonder if anyone’s ever watched this?” Bree asks.
We’re about to turn it off. I’ve had enough. But then some audio begins of the sound guy looping up a lapel microphone before we went into the church.
“We picked these up in Japan,” the tech is saying. “Neat, aren’t they? Perfect for weddings. You don’t notice them, and the sound quality of the vows will be top-notch. Testing, testing. Yeah? Right. Good to go!”
“Okay. I’m really doing this!” we hear me say nervously. My voice sounds young and unsure and shaky.
“You look beautiful,” Bree is saying. But I’d assumed she wasn’t there! “Are you sure about this?”
There’s a pause, and I can imagine myself trying to assemble conscious thought. No, I’m not sure, but it’s too late to back out now. Everyone’s waiting …
Bree slams her finger on the stop button. “Oh my God. I didn’t know they were recording that.”
Drew and I snap around to look at her.
“Keep playing it,” I say calmly.
“I don’t want to.” She’s tearing up already.
“Press play, Bree.”
“Please don’t make me listen to it,” she says. “If I could go back, Evie …”
I take the remote control out of her hand and aim it at the TV.
“Just say the word, Evie.” Now it’s Dad’s voice. “We can call the whole thing off.”
“You wouldn’t have to lift a finger,” Bree insists.
Now it’s the muffled sound of me crying. “Aren’t you meant to support me, no matter what?” I say. My voice is frail, laced with fear. Even without the full details, I want to tell myself to run. Say yes, Evie. Let them stop this for you.
Bree sits quietly on the couch, head in her hands, while I listen to her say, “Evie, I’m sorry. I just can’t stand beside you and watch you make the biggest mistake of your life.”
Then there’s the sound of footsteps retreating and a door banging. Did she just leave ?
It’s only 10 a.m. and I’m mentally drained. The more answers that fall into place, the more confused I become, and my head hurts from trying to reassemble the picture.
“Drew and Bree have gone to the bakery for breakfast things,” I tell my parents, after knocking tentatively on their bedroom door. Mum and Dad have slept in. Or maybe they’ve given us space. Either way, being alone with my thoughts is too much to bear, and I need them. “Can I come in?”
Years ago, I would have flopped onto their bed. But now I stand at the foot of it, contemplating the miles between us, even from a few feet away.
“He’s always been a nice boy,” Mum says.
“You never even met him, so how do you know?”
Her smile is the first I’ve seen since we arrived, and it’s an extraordinary flicker of hope for me. “You talked about him all the time in high school. We were convinced you were in love with him.”
She pats the bed, so I sit on the edge of it, contemplating her words. Was I ever in love with him? I fall back on the mattress, face to the ceiling. It’s a good impression of a lovestruck sixteen-year-old, probably, but I’m also just emotionally exhausted from the constant confusion. And revelations! Do I dare drop the suspected crime into the conversation? There’s only so much drama my parents can stand, and they barely accepted me into their house last night. The idea that their daughter’s father-in-law is a murderer would exceed that capacity.
“But then you got together with Oliver, so that was the end of that,” Dad tells me, straight.
I think of the way he offered to help me call off the wedding. “It feels like getting together with Oliver was the end of a lot more than that,” I admit.
None of it feels right. The wedding video explained some of it. I can see the attraction between us. I saw how he looked at me—like it was just me, and nobody else was in the room. I remember craving an eighteenth-century love story complete with grand gestures, and I can imagine the impact of this superstar boy crashing into my life. It must have felt like he was sweeping me off my feet.
“He dazzled you,” Mum says.
I roll onto my side to face them and start playing with the tassels on a throw cushion. Dad hates the cushions but patiently removes them from the bed each evening and places them back the next morning when he pulls up the bedspread. That’s love, really. Putting up with someone’s annoying little quirks. Simple acts of kindness that show you really understand a person. Surely that’s the type of love I wanted all along?
“Why did I stay with him?” I ask. “I can’t see it …”
Mum shrugs. “I never understood it, either.”
This is no help—I need a reason. I’m a smart woman, or thought I was. It makes no sense that I’d marry someone when I was as unhappy as I looked in that video. Particularly after my father and my best friend tried to talk me out of it.
“I suspect you were trying to keep him alive,” Dad says quietly. His words are infused with heartbreak. Even Mum looks surprised, as if they’ve never discussed this idea.
Keep him alive?
“He was very persuasive,” Dad adds. “More persuasive than we could be.”
I know how strong-willed I was at sixteen, and having just heard even a snippet of that determination on the recording, I can imagine exactly how that conversation went down. And I would have been too proud to admit I’d been wrong about him.
I don’t want to get upset. I don’t want to dislodge this conversation in any way. This is the first spark of my real family that I’ve felt, but there’s someone ringing the front doorbell incessantly, so I roll off the bed, redo my ponytail while walking down the hall, and answer the door.
Standing on my parents’ doorstep is a woman around my age in jeans and an oversize blue shirt who greets me with a warm smile. More than anything, I’m interested in the fact that she’s holding hands with the little girl from my camera roll.
“Evie!” the child says, extricating herself and rushing toward me, throwing her little arms around my waist. She stares up into my face, blue eyes alight with the kind of recognition I wish I felt too, blond curls swept into Cindy Brady pigtails. I can’t describe the relief that she seems to belong to this woman instead of me. Perhaps we’re friends?
“Well, hello there,” I say. I don’t want to let on that I don’t know who the little girl is—she’s clearly obsessed with me and I don’t want to confuse her.
“Harriet, let her breathe,” the mother says, and the girl lets go and takes my hand instead, as if we’re besties, staring at me that same, adoring way that she did in the photos. Then, just when the silence is getting awkward, she lets go and dashes inside my parents’ house!
“Harri!” the woman calls after her, but she’s disappeared from sight.
“I’m so sorry,” I explain. “I’m having trouble with my memory. I can’t place you.”
The car pulls in with Drew and Bree at this point, and they climb out, white cardboard boxes brimming with pastries. At the sight of the two of us standing on the veranda, they stop dead.
Harriet’s mum lights up seeing Drew, but her elation quickly dissolves, and she steps toward him, throwing her arms around his neck.
He passes the pastries he’s holding to Bree and brings his arms around this woman, his hand cradling her head against his chest, comforting her, looking over her shoulder directly at me.
I try not to look how I feel. Wildly envious and incredibly confused.
Eventually he brings her back up the path, his arm still around her, and presents her to me. “Evie, this is Chloe,” he explains. This is Chloe, with whom the situation is “complicated.” Is it Drew’s child who’s currently scampering around my parents’ house?
“Evie, I’m just so sorry,” Chloe says. Is she apologizing for stealing the romance out from under my nose before it even begins? “I didn’t know if I should come.”
She definitely shouldn’t have come! Because now I’ve kissed her boyfriend and raised my hopes, and the way he’s holding her is making my insides buckle. I am furious at him! How could he let this happen, with me so vulnerable and confused and Chloe so ordinary and nice and with a child in the picture? And why is she so upset? Is she here to confront me?
“Look, Chloe,” I say quickly and apologetically. “I didn’t know about you two.”
“No, I know you didn’t.”
So it’s true, then? Is Chloe his partner ? The man had not given off “in a relationship” vibes—particularly when he was kissing me.
All the air has rushed out of my lungs, and I can’t seem to inhale enough to replace it. I need to sit down. If I had any doubt about my feelings toward Drew, it has evaporated right this second, imagining him—no, looking at him—with the mother of his child. My heart is torn to pieces.
Bree suggests that Drew and Chloe go inside and find Harriet, and she sits beside me on the chair on the veranda. “Come on, Evie. It’s okay.”
Okay? How can any of this be okay? And why am I taking advice from the best friend who walked out on me in the precise moment I needed her most?
“She had a baby with him,” I say, gasping for oxygen, trying to regulate my breathing and heartbeat. “And I kissed him!”
Bree takes my hand. “You were married to him, Evie, obviously …”
“Married?”
Bree looks confused. “To Oliver? We just watched the wedding DVD this morning, remember?”
I stare at her. “Chloe had a baby with Oliver ?”
Bree nods, and I cry again. Oliver is the dad? I suppose I’m meant to feel outraged, but these are great, heaving sobs of relief. “Thank God,” I whisper, between breaths. “Thank God!”
Bree pushes me back to see my face. “Evie, who did you think she had a baby with?” And, as understanding dawns, she draws me into a tight hug while enormous waves of emotion seem to well up and spill out about someone I’ve known less than three days, plus half a lifetime.