All Chapters of ON MY WEDDING NIGHT : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

SUSAN The pan sizzled. Eggs. His favorite — scrambled, not too dry, with cheese folded in at the last second. I'd learned that about him three months into dating. Little things. The way he took his coffee. The side of the bed he slept on. The way he said my name when he wanted something.Stupid. I was standing over a stove thinking about how he said my name while a completely different name burned a hole in my brain.Joana.I flipped the eggs harder than I needed to.Why is that witch still calling him? I thought he said he deleted her number.He had said that. I remembered it clearly. Six months ago, sitting on his couch, his arm around me, his voice flat and final. "I blocked her. Deleted everything. She's not part of my life anymore, Susan."So either he lied.Or she found a new way in.I stabbed at the eggs with the spatula. "Should've blocked her on my phone too," I muttered. "Should've blocked her from existing—"Two arms wrapped around my waist from behind.I screamed.The spa

SUSAN Noah was still holding my phone.His thumb moved across the screen, scrolling, checking something. I watched his jaw work. Watched the muscle tick."There's no number," he said. "It says unknown.""I know.""People don't call from unknown numbers at seven in the morning, Susan.""Telemarketers do."He looked at me.I looked away.My hands were shaking. They'd been shaking since the sprinklers, since the smoke, since before that — but now it was worse, and I needed something to do with them. Something that wasn't sitting here under his stare.I stood up.The blanket slid off my shoulders and pooled on the floor, and I didn't pick it up. I just walked toward the hallway, toward the bathroom, toward anywhere that wasn't the couch and his eyes and that phone."Where are you going?""First aid kit.""You—" He stood. "Susan, wait. The phone—""You're bleeding." I didn't turn around. "You've got a cut on your head and you didn't even notice."He was quiet for a second.Then his footst

SUSAN I woke up on the couch with a blanket up to my chin and a crick in my neck.The spot beside me was empty. Cold. Noah's side of the blanket was folded back neatly, like he'd been careful not to wake me when he got up.Voices came from the kitchen.Low. Two men. One of them his.I lay still and listened."—not saying it's not her," the stranger was saying. "I'm saying we confirm before we act. If we move on a guess and we're wrong, she knows we're looking.""That's why I called you," Noah said.I heard a chair scrape. Then a mug. Then nothing for a few seconds."You want me to tail her," the man said."I want you to find her first.""Sir, with respect — I don't think finding her is going to be the problem."Silence.I opened my eyes.The kitchen doorway was right there. Ten feet from the couch. If I sat up slowly, if I leaned just right, I could see them both without turning my head.I did it in increments. Small movements. Blanket first, then shoulders, then my chin.Noah stood

SUSAN I made it to the edge of the bed without waking him.His arm slid off my waist and landed on the mattress with a soft thump. He didn't stir. Didn't even twitch. I stood there for a second with my heart in my throat, watching his chest rise and fall, and then I grabbed my robe off the chair and slipped out of the room.My phone was in my hand.I didn't remember deciding to pick it up.The hallway was quiet. The living room smelled like smoke again — or maybe it never stopped. I walked past the couch, past the folded blanket, past the coffee table where Nonso had left a business card face-up with nothing but a phone number on it.The kitchen was still gutted. Panels open. Wires hanging. That red thing gone now, bagged and taken, but the ghost of it still there under the burner housing where nobody would ever have looked.I sat down at the kitchen table.Poured a glass of water I didn't drink.Stared at the phone.Then I opened the call log and tapped the number.Unknown.Of cours

SUSAN Nonso came back at four with a hard drive.He set it on the coffee table next to the folder and the photo, and he didn't say anything until Noah had closed the blinds and we'd all sat down. Me on the couch with my knees up. Noah beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. Nonso in the chair."Your photographer," Nonso said. "Four thousand images. I asked him for the raw files, not the edited ones. He sent everything. Every frame, every misfire, every one nobody was supposed to see.""Why the raw ones?" Noah asked."Because edited galleries get culled. The photographer pulls out the bad shots. The ones with someone blinking, or someone in the background who wasn't supposed to be there." Nonso tapped the drive. "If someone wanted to be at your wedding without being seen, they'd make sure they got cut."I looked at the drive.Four thousand photographs of the best day of my life."Where do we start?" I asked."Reception," Nonso said. "That's where the crowd is. Ceremony's t