Chapter 5

Nathan's hand slid off my shoulder.

His mouth worked, and the words scraped out through his teeth. “She's not coming back. I put her in a cab and sent her off. Bianca, did you hear me? She's gone!”

I looked at the lipstick print on his chest and said nothing. I stood up from the piano bench, went around him, and headed for the door. He spun and grabbed my wrist, hard enough that his thumb dug into the bone. “Where are you going? I told you to come back with me!”

“Let go.” I said.

He didn't. He gripped tighter. His other hand went for his phone, the fingerprint unlock chirped once, the screen lit up, and he dialed fast, pressed it to his ear, and lowered his voice into the receiver. “Millie? Are you there yet? Tell her. Tell her you're fine.”

Millie's voice came through, a little distorted by the speaker, but that sweet, soft tone was perfectly clear. “Nathan, I'm in the cab now, my foot hurts so much, but it's okay …… Is Bianca all right? Don't fight, please, it's all my fault ……”

Nathan let out a breath and glanced at me, as if to say, See? She's so reasonable. He pushed the phone half an inch toward my face, telling me to listen for myself. I didn't take it. I only glanced down at the watch on his wrist. Ten thirty-seven. Twenty-three minutes until the eleven o'clock slot I'd booked.

“Nathan,” I said, my voice so calm it felt strange even to me, “for three years you've taken her calls. Every single one. Whether we were eating dinner, watching a movie, doing a wedding-dress fitting, or it was three in the morning. You set a special ringtone for her, didn't you. That four-second piano intro.”

His fingers stiffened. The phone screen was still lit, and Millie's voice broke through in pieces. “…… Nathan? Are you listening?”

I looked at his face, the blood draining out of it all at once, and pulled my own phone from my pocket, unlocked it, opened the photo album, and held it out to him. He hesitated a moment, then took it, and swiped down with his thumb.

The first photo. Three months ago, in a hotel hallway, holding Millie. She was in a bathrobe, ankles bare, his chin resting on the top of her head.

The second, a month ago, in the car, him snapping her as she tried on a wedding ring. She held up her ring finger for the camera, smiling, the lit sign of the ring counter behind her. The photo was taken on the Friday night he'd told me he was working late.

The third, five days ago, the one Millie posted to her feed and deleted seconds later. Nathan sat bare-chested on a hotel bed scrolling his phone, the covers bunched at his waist, and she lay in the crook of his arm holding up the phone for a selfie. The caption read, Being a suite tester is such exhausting work.

Nathan's hand started to shake. The phone slipped through his fingers and cracked against the marble floor.

I bent down and picked it up. The screen was cracked. I swiped to the original of that photo, opened the file details, and there it all was, the date, the time, the GPS location. The location was the bedroom of my fifty-million-dollar wedding home.

“She posted online that she's a 'wedding-home suite tester,'’” I turned the screen to his face, “but a suite tester works nine to five. The contract states, in writing, no overnight stays. Nathan, you're her client. You know that better than I do.”

His head jerked up, a film of tears rising in his eyes. “You investigated her?”

“I didn't investigate her,” I put my phone away. “I investigated you. In the past three months, you booked hotel rooms seventeen times on her membership app, bought her six nightgowns and three camisoles online, and had food delivery sent to the same hotel room, late at night, thirty-one times. You forwarded the statements for the supplementary card I gave you straight to my email. Did you ever think I'd look?”

The color went out of Nathan's face completely. His mouth hung open. “She's …… she's the little sister of a good buddy of mine, I promised I'd look after her ……”

“You promised to look after her,” I said, “you didn't promise to sleep with her.”

I turned and walked toward the door of Hall Three. At the doorway I stopped, my hand on the frame, and didn't look back.

“Do you know why I chose this place?”

Behind me there was only the sound of him choking back sobs.

“Our first date, that movie you took me to. Departures. When it let out, you told me on the street that when you got married someday, you didn't want one of those loud hotel ceremonies. You said you wanted somewhere quiet, that the mood of a memorial hall was just right. White flowers, a white dress, one piano piece, only the people closest to you. I laughed at you for being strange, but I remembered.”

“Three years, Nathan. I remembered every single thing you ever said. But you forgot.”

I stepped over the threshold, and the light from the corridor fell across my shoulders. Behind me came his hoarse shout, thick and nasal. “Bianca! Bianca! Come back ……”

I didn't stop.

At the end of the corridor, Blake leaned against the wall, two registration forms in his hand. He glanced past me, asked nothing, and held one out. “Fill this in. I left the groom's line blank. Waiting for you to fill it.”

I took the pen and wrote three words in the box marked Groom's Name.

Then I pushed the form back and looked at him. “Let's go. It's time.”

Blake looked down at the name on the form, paused, then the corner of his mouth curved up. He folded the form and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

I walked into Hall Three. The white chrysanthemums had been swapped for champagne roses, and a small bunch of lisianthus lay on the closed piano lid.

I didn't look back.