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."
