POV: Jasmine
The dress was on.
I had stood very still while the woman from the salon pinned the last small thing at my hip and zipped the back closed. I had let Nora put my earrings in because my hands were not steady enough for the small clasps and I did not want to admit that out loud.
Aurora was sitting on the edge of the bed in a pale dress with a satin sash, holding the rabbit in her lap. She had been watching me the way she watched me when she was reading something I had not said yet.
The dread under my collarbone was not under my collarbone anymore. It had risen up overnight and taken the whole space inside my chest. I could feel it in my throat. I could feel it in my hands.
I did not name it. I refused to name it. He is on the way. He is on the way.
"Mama, you look pretty," Aurora said, tilting her head at me.
I smoothed the front of the dress. "Thank you, baby."
She hugged the rabbit tighter. "Papa is going to cry."
I almost smiled. "Probably."
Aurora patted her pocket with great seriousness. "I have a tissue in my pocket. Nora gave me one."
"That was very smart of Nora." I sat down on the bed beside her. I put my hand on her small back through the satin. Her ribs moved under my palm the way they had moved in the hospital the morning she had been put on my chest for the first time, and the steadiness of that small breathing was the only steady thing in the room.
The coordinator knocked at the time the cars were supposed to have arrived. She was a tall woman with grey hair and a clipboard who had been doing weddings on this hillside for many years.
"Signora," she said, leaning into the doorway. "We will start moving the guests to the garden in a few minutes. Are you ready?"
I stood. "I am ready."
She glanced at her clipboard. "And the groom's car?"
"You would know that before I would," I told her.
She nodded quickly. "Of course. Excuse me. I will check."
I did not look at the clock on the wall. I knew exactly what time it was. I knew exactly what time the cars had been due. I knew the exact gap that had opened between those two times.
We went out onto the terrace.
The garden below was full of people in soft colours sitting on white chairs. The arch at the end of the aisle was wound with olive branches and small white roses, and the chairs were turned toward it, and there was no one standing under it.
Aurora put her hand into mine. She did not ask why. She had read the room.
The coordinator came back, her face professionally composed.
"He is not picking up," she said. "I have tried twice."
I kept my voice level. "Try Asher."
She lifted the radio to her shoulder and walked a few steps away. I watched her face the way I had watched a thousand faces across a thousand tables. She came back and shook her head.
"Nothing from Asher either," she said.
I did not blink. "Leo."
She was already turning. The pause was longer this time. When she came back, something in her posture had shifted — the clipboard held a little tighter against her chest.
"Leo is not answering," she said, quieter now.
"Finn," I said.
She stepped away without a word. The wind moved a little through the cypresses. Aurora's hand tightened on mine.
The coordinator came back. She stood still for a beat before she spoke.
"I cannot reach any of them, signora," she said.
I did not let my face move. "Start from the top. All four. In order."
She nodded once. "Yes."
A man in the third row — one of Liam's old friends, a tall blond man with a loud good nature — turned and called up to the terrace.
"They show up yet?" he asked, grinning.
I kept my hands still at my sides. "Not yet."
He looked around at his row, still grinning. "Sounds like that bachelor party went full Vegas. They will show up. Probably still in the back of the car arguing about who pays."
There was a small ripple of light laughter through the front rows.
I did not laugh. I felt the laughter touch the side of my face and slide off it. I saw the blond man's smile flatten. I saw the woman next to him put her hand on his arm.
Aurora's hand was so tight around two of my fingers that I knew there would be a mark there later.
"Mama," she said, very quietly. "Where is Papa?"
I looked down at her. "He is on the way, baby."
Her eyes searched mine. "Are you sure?"
"I am sure," I told her, and heard the lie sit perfectly flat inside the sentence.
The coordinator came back. "None of them, signora," she said. "I am sorry."
The minutes after that did not move the way minutes were supposed to move. They moved in the broken, distended way time moved when something was wrong and you had not yet been told what.
The murmur of small social noise went quieter and then quieter. Someone tried to start a joke, and the joke did not land.
I stood at the edge of the terrace with Aurora's hand in mine and watched the empty top of the drive. I did not go back inside. I did not sit down. I stood, in the dress that was just fine, and I watched the drive.
A full hour went by.
I felt it in my hands first. The small shaking that had been in them since I had put the earrings in had stopped. They were very still now. I knew that kind of still. That was the still that came after the body had given up on being warm.
I knelt down to Aurora.
"Baby," I said, keeping my voice steady. "I am going to make a phone call. I want you to go and stand with Auntie Nora for one minute."
Aurora's chin trembled. "Are you calling Papa?"
"I am calling — yes," I said. "I am calling about Papa."
She swallowed. "Okay."
She let go of my hand. She walked across the terrace to where Nora was standing at the doors, and Nora opened her arms without saying anything, and Aurora went into them and turned her face into Nora's stomach.
I took my phone out of the small clutch. I opened the keypad. I started typing the number I had typed on a different day, in a different country, when my brother had been on the floor of an apartment I had not been able to reach in time. One. One. Two.
The phone vibrated in my hand before my thumb hit the call button.
An incoming call came up over the keypad. The number was not in my contacts. A long string of digits with a country code I knew and a prefix I did not.
I lifted the phone to my ear.
"Pronto?" I said, and my voice did not sound like mine.
"Signora Harlow?" the man on the other end asked. Italian-accented English, very careful, very slow, the way people spoke when they were about to say a sentence they had said before and wished they did not have to say again.
"Signora Harlow," he said, "there has been a road accident."