The makeup chair was warm under me. The mirror in front was ringed with bulbs, and behind the bulbs, propped on a rolling cart, sat the small monitor I'd had Lacey wheel in.

Three thousand forty-two viewers.

The number sat in the top right corner like a scoreboard. Below it, the screen tiled into squares — a wall of faces, each one a connected guest, each one watching me get married.

Second row. Third box.

Ada Calloway. My grandmother. Her chin was tipped down, her mouth a little open, the iPad angled wrong so I could see more of her ear than her eye. My cousin's thumb hovered at the edge of the frame.

"She's dozing," I said to nobody.

"Sorry?" The makeup artist — Renata, hired off Lacey's shortlist — leaned in with a wand of gloss.

"Nothing. The light hits her funny."

Renata smiled and dabbed my lower lip. Then she frowned at the tube. "This isn't the shade. Hang on. Ninety seconds, I've got the right one in the kit downstairs."

"Go."

She went.

The door clicked. The room exhaled.

I sat very still. The monitor hummed. Cam Six was on the lower split, the hallway shot, creeping forward on Tomas's Steadicam toward the door of this room. The door I'd left cracked ten centimeters wide.

The hallway mic picked up a laugh first.

Female. Low. Throaty.

Sienna.

Then a second voice, easy, amused.

"Knock it off."

Damon.

I lifted my eyes to the monitor. My hands stayed in my lap.

He'll push her off, I thought. He'll say her name like a warning, and she'll roll her eyes, and he'll come find me and tell me his maid of honor has lost her mind in a red dress.

The Steadicam crept another inch.

"Damon."

"Don't."

"Damon, look at me."

"I said don't."

Two seconds.

I counted them. One Mississippi. Two.

No scrape of a shoe pivoting away. No door opening. No "I have to go." Just breath, and fabric, and the small wet sound of a mouth.

"Tonight," Damon said.

His voice had dropped into the register he used in bed. I knew that register. I had a personal trademark on that register.

"Tonight what." Sienna, breathy.

"Tonight, after the toasts. After the cake. I'll deal with her. I'll tell her it's done."

"You said that in March."

"I'm saying it now. You hear me? After tonight, I'm divorcing her. We get through the day, and then it's over."

The viewer counter blinked.

3,042.

3,042.

Then the comment ticker, which had been chugging at maybe fifty a second, tipped.

Five hundred a second.

The numbers scrolled too fast to read. Faces in the grid leaned closer to their cameras. A woman in row four covered her mouth. A man in row six stood up and walked off-screen. Ada's box — Ada's box — jolted. A hand entered the frame. Not my cousin's hand. Somebody else's. Slapping the iPad. Slapping it again. Trying to wake her. Trying to turn it off. I couldn't tell which.

I watched my grandmother's box shake.

I did not move.

In the hallway, Sienna whispered something I didn't catch. Damon laughed, soft, the laugh he used to give me at three in the morning when I couldn't sleep.

I looked at the lipstick Renata had left on the vanity. The wrong shade. Too pink.

I picked it up.

I leaned toward the mirror. I parted my lips. I painted the lower one, corner to corner, in a single steady stroke. The color was wrong. It didn't matter. The line was clean.

I capped the tube.

I looked at my left hand.

The ring was a cushion-cut, two carats, financed across thirty-six months in Damon's name. I slid it off over the knuckle. It came easy. I had lost three pounds in the last week from nerves I'd called excitement.

My makeup bag sat open on the counter. I unzipped the inner pocket — the one with the spare bobby pins and a tampon and a folded twenty — and I dropped the ring in. I zipped it closed.

I checked the clock on the monitor.

Thirty-eight seconds, start to finish.

In the hallway, Damon was still talking.

I stood up.

My dress made the small expensive sound silk crepe makes when it remembers it cost six thousand dollars. I walked to the door. I did not look through the crack. I pulled it open the rest of the way, stepped into the corridor on the side opposite their voices, and turned left.

Tomas was at his post. The Steadicam was pointed away from me, toward the sound. His back was to me. He didn't see me leave the suite.

I walked.

Past the photo wall. Past the gift table. Down the curved staircase to the lobby level, one hand on the rail, the other holding the front of my skirt off the carpet.

The sign-in podium stood where I'd left it. Quarter inch to the left. Quarter inch back. Pen parallel to the spine.

The guest book was open to a fresh cream page. Three names so far, in three different inks.

I closed it.

I flipped it over.

The back cover was a smooth panel of bonded leather, the color of milk in coffee. I reached under the podium for the marker the calligrapher had left clipped to the underside. Black. Fine tip.

I uncapped it with my teeth.

I wrote one line on the back of the book.

I capped the marker. I set it down. I reached into my makeup bag — I'd carried it with me, I realized, the whole way down, looped over my wrist like a clutch — and I took out the ring. I placed it on top of the line I'd just written, dead center, the cushion-cut catching the chandelier.

I straightened the book. Quarter inch. Quarter inch.

The livestream camera mounted above the sign-in table watched me do it. Its little green light burned steady.

I didn't look up at it.

I lifted my skirt. I walked past the ballroom doors, past the kitchen pass, past a busser pushing a cart of champagne flutes who didn't recognize the bride without her bouquet. I found the staff corridor. I found the gray door at the end with the red EXIT sign humming above it.

I pushed the bar.

Outside, the loading dock smelled like cardboard and exhaust. A delivery van idled. The driver was scrolling his phone. He glanced up, saw a woman in a wedding dress, looked back down.

I let the door fall shut behind me.

Inside, on a cream leather guest book at a podium nobody was watching, my line waited in black marker, weighted by two carats.

And upstairs, Cam Six kept rolling on an empty bridal suite, the door drifting wider on its hinge, ten centimeters becoming twenty becoming thirty.

Three thousand forty-two boxes watched the room I wasn't in.

The first guest to walk through the lobby would be the first to lift that ring.

The fire door clanged shut behind me. The stairwell smelled like rubber and somebody's vape.

I went down.

My heels were a problem on the metal grates, so I took them off, hooked the straps over two fingers, and kept moving. Six flights. The dress dragged behind me like a wounded animal.

On the landing between floors three and two, I stepped on my own train and almost went face-first into a railing.

"Okay," I said out loud. "Okay, no."

I dropped the heels. I dug into the small white satin bag still looped around my wrist — emergency kit, every wedding planner carries one, and I had built mine for someone else's wedding nineteen times before today.

Floral shears. Stainless. Sharp enough to take the head off a calla lily.

I gathered the train in my left hand, pinched the silk crepe at knee height, and cut.

The shears bit. The fabric shrieked.

I sawed across, hand over hand, until the bottom three feet of my dress fell away in a cream puddle on the concrete. Six thousand dollars. Twelve fittings. I kicked it aside.

The trash can on the parking-garage landing had a hinged lid that said PUSH. I pushed. I stuffed the dress in. The lid swung shut on a corner of silk that refused to go down.

I shoved it the rest of the way with my palm.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

Lacey. Lacey. Lacey. Lacey. Lacey. Lacey.

The seventh call I picked up.

"Mira, oh my God, Mira, where are you, where—"

"Lacey. Breathe."

"The ballroom — Damon is — he's screaming at Tomas, he's pulled the cam off the rig, Sienna's gone, somebody saw the guest book, oh my God Mira there's a ring on the guest book—"

"Lacey."

"—and your grandmother, the iPad in Maine, your cousin keeps calling, she's saying Ada saw, Ada saw, Mira she—"

"Lacey." I planted my bare feet on the concrete. "Three things. Write them down."

A scrape of pen on paper. "Going."

"One. Kill the livestream. Now. Every feed, every box. Black it out."

"Killed."

"Two. Tell the officiant to announce the bride is unwell. Wedding postponed. Not canceled. Postponed. Use that word."

"Postponed."

"Three. Every sign-in gift box goes back out to the cars. Match them to the parking valet's list. Nobody leaves with a centerpiece. Nobody leaves with a favor. We unmake the day."

"Mira—" Her voice cracked. "What about Damon?"

"Not on the list."

"He's asking where—"

"Not on the list, Lacey."

A pause. I could hear the ballroom behind her. Somebody was crying. Somebody was laughing the wrong kind of laugh.

"Copy," she said.

I hung up.

I came out of the stairwell into the lower garage. A woman in a stripped wedding dress, barefoot, holding heels and shears. A valet looked at me once and decided very hard to look somewhere else.

I opened the rideshare app.

The address I typed was not the new place. Not the condo Damon had picked out, the one with my name nowhere on the deed. Not my mother's house in Worcester.

414 Linden. Apartment 4B.

The condo I'd signed away three weeks ago to fund six cameras and a hospice livestream. Keys due Monday. Four days mine.

The driver pulled up in a gray Camry. He glanced at the dress, the shears, my bare feet.

"Wedding?"

"Was."

He nodded once and didn't ask anything else. Best four stars I'd give all year.

I got in. I put the shears in my bag. I watched the parking garage slide away in the side mirror.

My phone lit up on my thigh.

Damon Vance — 47 unread.

I turned the screen face down on the seat.

The driver took the long way around the construction on Boylston. I didn't correct him. The meter could run. Nothing in my body wanted to arrive.

We pulled up at the corner of Linden and Cross. I tipped him in cash from the emergency kit and stepped out into a wind that smelled like rain coming.

The Camry pulled away.

I walked half a block. Stopped.

414 Linden. Six stories of pre-war brick. Third window from the left on the fourth floor — that one was mine. Had been mine. Was mine until Monday at 9 a.m.

I reached into the satin bag for my keys.

Bobby pins. Tampon. Folded twenty. Shears. Lipstick in the wrong shade.

No keys.

I closed my eyes.

The keys were in the new apartment. The one in Damon's name. On the kitchen island where I'd dropped them last night next to a bottle of prosecco he'd opened to "celebrate the night before." My toothbrush was there. My passport was there. The leather jewelry box my father had given me at sixteen was there.

Everything I owned was inside a door whose lock I no longer controlled.

A laugh came out of me. Short. Ugly.

The man walking his beagle on the other side of the street crossed to avoid me.

I sat down on the low brick wall in front of my building. The hem of what was left of my dress rode up over my knees. My feet were filthy. I didn't care.

I pulled out my phone.

47 unread from Damon. I didn't open them. I didn't read the previews. I scrolled past the thread like it was a stranger's.

I opened my contacts.

I went to the H's.

Hale, Adrian — atty. (Lacey rec.)

I looked at the name.

I tried to remember when I had typed it in. Lacey had said something — when? Three weeks ago? Four? We'd been at the printer picking up programs, and Lacey had been on her phone, and I had said something offhand, something like *if I'm ever murdered at this wedding the cops should know it was the florist*, and Lacey had laughed and then gone quiet and then said, low, *I have a guy. Just in case.*

I'd asked, *In case of what.*

She'd said, *In case of anything.*

She'd texted me a number that night. I'd saved it. I had not told her I'd saved it. I had not told myself why I'd saved it.

I looked at the name on my screen now.

Adrian Hale.

A drop of water hit the glass over his name. Then another. The brick under my legs started to darken in spots.

I lifted my thumb.

I pressed call.

The phone rang once.

The rain came down harder, plastering the cut edge of my dress to my shins, soaking through the satin bag on my wrist, beading on the screen between me and a name I had carried in my pocket for a month without admitting I was carrying it.

The phone rang twice.

A man's voice picked up on the third ring, awake, unhurried, like he had been expecting this call from someone, today, not necessarily me.

"This is Hale."

The ballroom was empty.

I wasn't there. I was in a vinyl booth six blocks away, watching it through Lacey's phone — she'd sent me a thirty-second clip from a busser she'd tipped twenty bucks.

Damon stood alone at the sign-in podium.

He flipped the guest book. Page one. Page two. Three names in three inks. He kept going. Blank cream pages, one after another, his thumb working faster, the pages snapping.

He got to the back.

He turned it over.

His shoulders went still.

The marker line was right there. *Damon Vance, you don't have to deal with me tonight. Mira Calloway.* The ring sat on top of the period.

His hand came up. It was shaking. I could see the shake from a phone screen, through a busser's pocket, through six blocks of rain.

He picked up the ring.

The clip ended.

"Mira."

I looked up. Lacey was across the booth from me, mascara smeared into her temples, holding a coffee she hadn't touched.

"I'm here."

"You're not. You're staring at the table."

"I'm here."

I slid the phone back to her. The waitress walked past with a pot. I shook my head.

"The dress." Lacey nudged her gym bag with her sneaker. "I'll drop it at the cleaner on Tremont. There's a consignment site, Once-Worn, they take ivory crepe—"

"Tomorrow morning. Online by Monday."

"Mira, you don't have to — your mom would buy that dress back from you in a second—"

"Online by Monday."

She closed her mouth.

I tugged the sleeves of the hoodie she'd brought me down over my hands. Generic gray. The jeans were a size too big. I'd never been so grateful for ugly clothes.

"Lacey. I need a favor."

"Anything."

"Calloway Events did Damon's company year-end party. February. We did their April investor mixer. We did the June retreat at the Cape."

"Yeah."

"The hotels run access logs. Key card swipes. Every entrance, every elevator, every floor." I picked up my pen, clicked it. "Pull six months. Every event we ran for his company. I want every swipe under his name and every swipe under Sienna Park's."

Lacey blinked. "How am I—"

"You dated the AV manager at the Mandarin until March. He has a friend at the Langham. The Langham has a sister property at the Cape. Make calls."

"Mira." Her voice dropped. "You think this didn't start today."

"I know it didn't start today."

"How."

"He used a register on her in that hallway he's used on me for two years. You don't get to that register in an afternoon."

She wiped under her eye with the side of her thumb. "Okay."

"This week. Not next."

"This week."

"Thank you."

The waitress dropped a check we hadn't asked for. I slid it under my elbow.

Lacey watched me pull the folder out of her gym bag — the one she'd grabbed from my apartment on her way over, the one I'd told her was on the kitchen counter under the fruit bowl.

The bank's logo. The loan extension paperwork.

I uncapped the pen.

"Mira—"

"Don't."

"That was supposed to get paid off Monday."

"Plans changed."

"Damon's wire—"

"Isn't coming." I signed the first page. "Was never mine. Was a gift contingent on a wedding."

"You're going to carry two-forty by yourself."

"I'm going to carry two-forty by myself."

I signed the second page. The third. Initialed the boxes. The pen scratched. The booth's vinyl squeaked under me every time I shifted my hip.

Lacey's face did the thing it does right before she cries in front of a client.

"Mira. Do you want to call your parents."

I capped the pen.

I sat with the question.

My mother. My father. My mother who had cried at the dress fitting. My father who had practiced his walk down the aisle in the kitchen in his socks. My mother who would, the second she heard, get in a car. My father who would, the second he heard, get on a phone with Damon and lose ten years off his heart.

My grandmother, eighty-six pounds, watching me leave a room in a wedding dress and then watching the room go empty.

"No."

"Mira—"

"If I call them now, my mother is on I-90 inside of an hour. My father calls Damon. My father has a stent, Lacey. He has a stent."

"Okay."

"They'll fall apart. Then I have to hold them up. Then I don't get to fall apart at all, ever, because the only window I have is the one before they know."

"So when."

"After Monday. After I sit with Hale. After I have something to tell them other than *he was sleeping with my maid of honor and I left.*"

"What do you tell them then."

"I tell them I'm filing." I slid the loan papers back into the folder. "And I tell them what I'm filing with."

My phone buzzed on the table. Unknown number. I let it go to voicemail. It rang again. Same number.

I picked up.

"Calloway."

"This is Hale. Returning."

I sat up an inch.

"Mr. Hale."

"You called this morning. I had a deposition. Apologies."

"Monday. Ten a.m. Your office."

"I have eleven."

"Ten."

A small pause. "Ten."

The waitress refilled the cup at the next booth. The espresso machine hissed. Lacey was watching me like I was somebody she'd just met.

"Mr. Hale. Before Monday."

"Yes."

"I'm not calling you because my husband cheated on me. I'm calling you because I'm about to become the most expensive problem on his balance sheet, and I want the lawyer who knows how to make that happen."

The line went quiet.

I counted. One. Two. Three. Four.

"Ten a.m.," he said. "Bring everything."

"I will."

I hung up.

Lacey's mouth was open.

"Don't," I said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was about to say that's the coldest sentence I've ever heard you say."

"Good."

I pushed the folder into her bag. I stood. The hoodie sleeve rode up. I tugged it back down.

"Cleaner. Consignment. Access logs."

"Cleaner. Consignment. Access logs."

"I'll text you tonight."

"Mira." She caught my wrist. "Eat something."

"Tomorrow."

I left a twenty on the check and pushed the door open with my shoulder.

The rain had stopped. The street smelled like wet asphalt and the bakery two doors down. I stepped off the curb and looked up because the light at the corner had changed and a bus was coming.

The bus stop across the street had a digital ad panel above the bench.

It was running the noon news ticker.

LOCAL TRENDING — and then a still frame, grainy, pulled from a livestream. A cream-papered hallway. A door cracked open. Ten centimeters of dark.

My door.

The ticker rolled.

Second story.

VANCE CAPITAL — EMERGENCY BOARD STATEMENT ISSUED 2:47 PM.

I stopped in the middle of the crosswalk.

The wedding had collapsed at one fifteen.

It was three twelve.

Damon's company had pushed an emergency board statement in the ninety-two minutes it took me to change clothes and sign a loan extension.

The bus blew its horn.

I didn't move.