The church started filling up a little after eleven-thirty.
People came in through the big double doors right next to me. Owen’s family from Michigan. Hannah’s friends from college. Her coworkers from the children’s hospital in their nice dresses and suits. Our neighbors. People from church who had watched Hannah grow up.
Almost everybody who walked past me did a double take.
“Laura?” said Mrs. Patterson from next door. She stopped in the aisle and looked at me, then at the little white card, then back at me. “Honey, what are you doing back here?”
“I’m fine, Ruth,” I said. “Go find your seat.”
“But shouldn’t you be…”
“I’m fine.”
She frowned, but she kept walking.
Pastor Jim’s wife, Carol, saw me. She went pale and started to come over. I shook my head at her, just slightly. She stopped. But she sat down in the row right in front of me instead of up front where she usually sat. Every few minutes, she turned around and looked at me with worried eyes.
Then Mark’s sister Joanne came in. She walked right past me without seeing me at first. Then she stopped dead in the aisle, turned around, and stared.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no, no, no. Laura. What is this?”
“Joanne, please.”
“Who did this? Did Crystal do this?”
“Joanne.” I grabbed her hand. “Please. Not today. Please just go sit down.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were blazing. Joanne has never liked Crystal. She was the one who took Hannah to the park every Saturday for six months after Crystal left, because Mark was working double shifts and couldn’t afford a babysitter.
“Mark doesn’t know,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“No. And he’s not going to know. Not until after.”
“Laura…”
“Please.”
She squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. Then she walked up the aisle and sat down in the second row. I watched her turn around and glare at the back of Crystal’s head. If looks could kill, Crystal would have been on the floor.
At the front of the church, Crystal was sitting in the first chair on the left with her legs crossed. She was talking to Hannah’s grandmother on her side, a woman I’d met exactly twice. Every once in a while, she laughed a little too loudly and touched her perfect hair.
At ten to noon, the organist started playing softly.
The ushers closed the big double doors beside me. The air got warmer. The church got quieter.
Owen came out from a side door with Pastor Jim and his groomsmen. He stood at the front in his dark gray suit, clasping and unclasping his hands. He looked so nervous he might faint. He scanned the crowd, and his eyes passed over the front row, then kept going, and going, until they got all the way to the back.
He saw me.
His face changed. He frowned. He leaned over and whispered something to his best man.
Then the bridesmaids started coming down the aisle. One at a time. In long, dusty rose dresses.
The same color as mine.
I hadn’t known that. Nobody had told me what color the bridesmaids were wearing. I’d just picked my dress because it was Hannah’s favorite color when she was eight.
I watched them walk past me, one after another, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.
Then the organist paused.
There was a long, quiet moment.
And then the music swelled. The wedding march. The big one. The one that makes everybody’s heart jump.
Everyone stood.
The big double doors opened right beside me.
And Hannah came through them on Mark’s arm.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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