Chapter 1 - The Envelope at the Altar
The church clock struck two, and the man I was supposed to marry still hadn't arrived.
My mother had stopped checking the doors. The organist's hands rested above the keys without touching them. Two hundred guests sat in the pews pretending they didn't hear the whispers traveling from one end of St. Mark's to the other.
I stood alone at the altar in a dress that had taken my sister three weekends to alter.
My father waited near the first pew with the small ring box Nathan had left in the church office. He had refused to put it in his pocket. The box seemed to offend him more than the empty place beside me, as if a ring could explain why a grown man had chosen not to arrive.
"He's not coming, is he?"
Eli Parker stepped out from the side aisle.
He'd been Nathan's friend since college and mine for almost as long. There was no boutonniere on his jacket, though I'd left one for him near the guest book.
"Lena," he said, "you need to read something first."
He handed me a plain envelope with my name written across the front in Nathan's familiar slanted handwriting.
Inside were three letters.
They were handwritten on yellow paper. One was addressed to me, dated six months earlier. The second was addressed to a woman named Rebecca Sloan. The third, written just yesterday, was to Eli.
In the first letter Nathan wrote: I have put something in your name that you never agreed to. I keep telling myself I'll make it right before the wedding.
I stopped reading.
"What is this?"
Eli looked at the guests and lowered his voice.
"I found them in the small bag Nathan left in the church office. He asked me not to give them to you until he came back. He isn't coming back."
I unfolded the second letter.
It mentioned a business loan, a bakery account, and the name of a lender I'd never used.
My bakery account.
Eli watched my face.
"I never got to tell you he was never good enough."
I looked up at him, more angry than comforted.
"You had seven years to tell me if you knew something."
"I didn't know about the letters until this morning," he said. "I knew he was careless with money. I didn't know he had done this."
"And you let me wait here?"
He didn't make an excuse.
"I stayed."
Those two words didn't rescue me. They simply meant there was one person in the church prepared to stand near me while I decided what to do.
I took a breath and turned toward the pews.
"The wedding will not take place today," I said.
For a few seconds, there was no sound. Then my mother rose, my sister covered her mouth, and the organist closed the music book.
I told the guests that they could leave and that my family would contact them about the reception arrangements. I didn't accuse Nathan of a crime from the altar. I hadn't verified a single line of the letters.
I knew only that he'd left me there and written something he was too afraid to say aloud.
Outside, my sister Mara helped me gather the train of my dress. She wanted to call Nathan's parents. I asked her not to. I needed to get to my bakery before its closing shift ended.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because one letter has my account number in it."
My phone buzzed while we stood beside the church steps.
Nathan's name appeared on the screen.
I opened the message.
Please don't call the bank. If you do, they'll take everything.
I stared at those words with the envelope shaking in my hand.
May you like
Until that moment, I'd thought I had been left at the altar.
Now I understood I might have been left with his debts.
