6. Forty-Eight Seconds
Chapter six
Forty-Eight Seconds
Playing the fool took a staggering amount of energy. By the Wednesday before the wedding, I was exhausted just from the sheer effort of acting normal. I spent my days nodding at Ian when I wanted to scream, and laughing at Piper’s jokes when my stomach turned.
I was living two entirely separate lives. In the West Loop, my new apartment was quietly accumulating the pieces of my future. I ordered a mattress, a simple sofa, and a coffee maker. I had them delivered strictly during the hours Ian was at the office.
But in Oak Park, I was the devoted wife and the reliable maid of honor. The final week before a wedding is famously a chaotic sprint, and I anchored my sanity to the schedule.
I picked up the dry cleaning and confirmed the hotel block for out-of-town guests. I sat on the couch with Ian and watched him play with the dog, letting him kiss my forehead before we went to sleep.
It was a terrifyingly easy performance. I realized that keeping a marriage alive was just a series of habits.
Ask about his day. Touch his shoulder when you walk past his chair.
Make his coffee the way he likes it. You didn’t actually have to love the person to do those things.
You just had to be willing to do the labor.
And I was willing. The labor was my camouflage.
On Thursday night, exactly twenty-four hours before the rehearsal dinner, we hosted the final family summit.
Diane had insisted on a trial run of the reception tablescape. She arrived at our house at six o’clock with a box full of charger plates and linen napkins. She brought a mock-up of the low floral centerpieces, delivered by the florist that morning.
By seven, my dining room table was completely buried under cream-colored roses and gold-rimmed glassware.
“The napkins need a different fold,” Diane said.
She stood at the head of the table with her hands on her hips.
She wore a tailored beige blouse, her hair perfectly coiffed.
Her forehead was creased with intense, absolute anxiety.
“The pocket fold looks too corporate. It needs to be a swan. Or a fan. Gemma, what do you think?”
“A fan is classic, Mom,” I said smoothly. I carried a tray of roasted chicken and asparagus from the kitchen and set it on the sideboard. “It gives the plate more height.”
“Exactly.” Diane sighed. She shot a vindicated glance at Spencer, who sat at the edge of the table looking incredibly tired. “See, Spencer? Gemma has an eye for these things. You just have to trust the process.”
Spencer ran a hand over his face. He was still wearing his light-blue scrubs from the clinic, having come straight from work. “I trust the process, Diane. I just don’t want us stressing over napkin geometry when the schedule for the photographer is still up in the air.”
“Oh, stop being so practical,” Piper chimed in.
She glided into the dining room, carrying a bottle of Pinot Noir and two empty glasses.
She looked radiant. She had spent the entire day at a spa getting a bridal-glow facial, paid for with the credit card she was about to max out.
“Gemma will handle the photographer’s schedule. Right, Gem?”
“I emailed him the finalized timeline this morning,” I said, taking my seat.
Piper beamed. She poured a generous glass of wine for herself and slid the second glass across the table to Ian. “You always fix it for us.”
Ian caught the glass. His fingers brushed against Piper’s for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. It was a brief touch, imperceptible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it.
“What would we do without her?” Ian asked, raising the glass in a lazy toast toward me.
“We’d be lost,” Piper agreed, her eyes sparkling as she looked at him.
I picked up my water glass and took a sip, letting the cool liquid wash down my dry throat.
Dinner was an exercise in surrealism. I sat at the center of the table and watched the people I loved most lie to me, to each other, and to themselves.
Spencer carved the chicken, oblivious to the fact that his fiancée didn’t love him. She just wanted to spend his money. He talked about his patient roster and his excitement for their honeymoon to St. Lucia. He was a good man. Steady, honest, and entirely out of his depth.
If there was anything I regretted about this entire situation, it was that Spencer would also suffer in the end. He didn’t deserve a public ambush. But at this point, it couldn’t be helped. Telling him the truth could have very easily ruined my plan and made my clean break impossible.
“I have to say,” Spencer said, reaching for the bowl of asparagus, “I’m really glad we got the budget locked down.”
He looked warmly at Piper. “Cutting those hanging orchids and the open bar was the right call. We’re starting our marriage without being in the red. I appreciate you being reasonable about it.”
Piper looked down at her plate, her lips twisting in a small smile. She brought her napkin to her mouth to hide it.
Ian leaned back in his chair, swirling the wine in his glass. He didn’t look at Spencer. He looked directly at me. His gaze was heavy with the shared secret he thought we possessed.
I suddenly understood exactly what their plan was.
Spencer was going to notice a sixty-thousand-dollar floral installation the second he walked into his reception.
When he inevitably asked about it, Piper was going to play innocent.
She would tell Spencer that her sister and brother-in-law had surprised them with the ultimate wedding gift.
Ian thought I was his willing accomplice in this lie.
“Sometimes you just have to prioritize what really matters,” Ian said. He reached under the table and rested his hand on my knee. “Luckily, my wife and I love to spoil her.”
My stomach turned, but I didn’t flinch. I only smiled, like he expected me to. “We just want Piper to have the perfect day.”
Diane clapped her hands together. “And it will be perfect! As long as the weather holds. Gemma, did you confirm the tent rental for the cocktail-hour patio?”
“Confirmed,” I said.
“Good. Now, about the seating chart…” Diane launched into a ten-minute monologue about the political ramifications of putting Aunt Susan next to Spencer’s uncle.
Tuning her out, I focused on the mechanical act of chewing and swallowing. I watched Ian and Piper exchange another quick, intimate glance across the table when Spencer looked away to answer a text.
Watching them perform their little pantomime of innocence didn’t hurt. It just confirmed that I was making the right choice. They were incredibly broken people. They deserved exactly what was coming to them.
In a way, it was rather funny that one of Piper’s selfish whims would be her downfall. Of all things, she would likely never expect wedding flowers to ruin her life. But that just made it all the more delicious.
By nine-thirty, Diane was packed up and gone. Spencer and Piper left shortly after. Spencer needed to be up for early-morning Invisalign fittings, and Piper needed her beauty sleep.
Ian and I loaded the dishwasher in the quiet kitchen.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Ian said, scraping a plate into the garbage. “Spencer’s a bit of a tight-ass, but he’s harmless.”
“He loves her,” I said simply.
Ian scoffed, making a low, dismissive sound. “He loves the idea of her. He wants a shiny wife to make him look less boring. But he’s not going to know how to handle her when she gets restless.”
It was probably true. Even before this entire disaster, I’d never understood what Spencer saw in Piper. But that was Spencer’s business, not mine. And when all was said and done, he could probably find a better shiny wife than my sister. At least one who didn’t cheat with her own brother-in-law.
“I’m going to finish up some emails in the office,” I told him, wiping down the marble island with a damp cloth. “I might be a while. The photographer sent over some last-minute lighting questions.”
“Don’t stay up too late,” Ian said, kissing the top of my head. “Big night tomorrow.”
“I won’t.”
I waited until I heard his footsteps climb the stairs. The bedroom door closed. Once I was satisfied he wouldn’t be coming out again, I walked into the home office and turned on the small desk lamp.
I didn’t open my email. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sat down in the leather chair. I had exactly one thing left to prepare.
I opened the video-editing app I had downloaded two days ago. The interface was black, cluttered with audio tracks and timelines. I imported the file labeled Meeting_Notes_Dallas.
The video loaded. Even scaled down to the size of my phone screen, the image was perfectly clear. The soft glow of the living room lamp. The tangle of limbs on the sectional. My husband and my sister.
I didn’t need to watch the whole four minutes and twenty-two seconds again. I had memorized every frame. The rehearsal dinner at the country club was going to be a tightly scheduled affair. A hundred and fifty people. An open mic for toasts. I needed a clip that was surgical.
I dragged the slider across the timeline.
Bypassing the buildup, I started the clip right at the crescendo, the exact moment Piper threw her head back against the cushions.
I adjusted the audio track. I bumped the volume up by twenty percent and ran a quick noise-reduction filter to dampen the hum of the refrigerator.
“Oh God, Ian,” Piper’s voice moaned from the phone speaker. It was wet, frantic, and crystal clear. “Right there.”
“Tell me this is better than Spencer,” Ian groaned. The sound of skin slapping against skin echoed in the quiet office.
“Spencer doesn’t even know how to touch me,” Piper gasped. “Don’t stop. Deeper.”
I let the video play through the visceral, undeniable reality of their affair.
I watched Ian’s hips drive upward one last time before he let out a ragged groan, his head falling back against the armrest. The clip captured the shudder of Piper’s climax as she collapsed forward against his chest, followed by the heavy, breathless silence.
Then came the final, cruel punchline.
Piper shifted on the screen, pushing herself up. A sharp, post-coital giggle escaped her lips. “Did she actually sign off on the hanging orchids?”
I cut the video right after Ian caught his breath and said, “She will.”
Total runtime: forty-eight seconds.
It was perfect. It was vulgar enough to command absolute silence in a crowded room, and detailed enough to eliminate any plausible deniability.
I exported the file directly to my phone’s camera roll, then connected a small, white HDMI adapter to the bottom of my device. It was the same adapter I used to run slideshows for corporate presentations. I plugged the spare monitor’s HDMI cable into the adapter to test the connection.
The screen flickered. My phone’s display mirrored perfectly onto the large monitor. Audio and video, synced and flawless.
I unplugged the adapter and slipped it into my pocket. It felt a little like carrying a bomb. Suitable, I supposed, since I would be detonating my husband’s and my sister’s lives with it.
I headed upstairs. Tucker was asleep on the hallway rug, his tail giving a soft thump against the floorboards as I walked past.
I went into the guest bedroom, where my clothes for the wedding weekend were hanging.
For me, the main event was tomorrow night.
The rehearsal dinner was being held in the grand ballroom of the Oak Park Country Club.
It was an opulent space with crystal chandeliers and a state-of-the-art audiovisual system.
Piper had specifically demanded the AV setup so they could play a slideshow of their childhood photos during dessert.
How kind of her to set the stage for my revenge.
I opened the closet door.
My rehearsal dress hung in a black protective garment bag. It was a deep aquamarine silk, elegant and understated. I pulled it off the rack and laid it carefully on the guest bed. Then I packed my black heels and my makeup bag.
Perhaps I should have been nervous, but I wasn’t. The only thing I felt was anticipation.
I zipped the overnight bag shut. It felt symbolic, because tomorrow I’d close a chapter in my life.
I’d spent my entire life fixing things for these people. I’d absorbed their debts, managed their tempers, and smoothed over their mistakes. I had been the steady ground beneath their feet.
Tomorrow night, I was going to let them fall.