“Yesterday.”
His voice was almost unrecognizable.
The girl nodded.
“When?”
“After rehearsal.”
“Where?”
“In the upstairs bathroom.”
The father stared at the door.
The rehearsal dinner had been held in the same mansion.
He had been downstairs thanking guests.
The bride had disappeared for perhaps seven minutes.
He remembered asking where she had gone.
She said she was helping his daughter fix the ribbon on her dress.
The father closed his eyes.
“What did she do?”
His daughter looked down at her own arm.
The father followed her gaze.
A pale yellow mark was barely visible beneath the short sleeve.
His stomach turned.
He gently touched near it without pressing.
“Did she do that?”
The little girl began crying again.
“She squeezed me.”
The father pulled his hand back.
“What else?”
“She said after the honeymoon you were going to send me to Auntie’s.”
His jaw tightened.
“Did I ever say that?”
“No.”
“Did anyone ever say that in front of you?”
“No.”
“She said you already decided.”
The father stood.
His daughter grabbed his jacket.
“No!”
He stopped immediately.
“What?”
“Don’t go yell at her.”
The terror in her voice froze him.
“Why?”
“She said if I ruined today, she would tell everybody I lie because I’m jealous.”
The father looked down at his daughter.
“She said you’d believe her.”
That sentence landed harder than everything else.
Not because the bride believed she could manipulate him.
Because his daughter believed there was even a possibility she was right.
The father knelt again.
He held both of his daughter’s hands.
“Listen carefully.”
She looked at him.
“There is no woman on this earth I will choose over you.”
Her lips trembled.
“Not today.”
“Not after a wedding.”
“Not ever.”
She began to cry.
This time she moved toward him.
The father pulled her into his arms.
Her whole body shook.
He held her and stared at the wall over her shoulder.
Something inside him became very cold.
His anger did not disappear.
It organized itself.
After several minutes, his daughter whispered:
“There’s something else.”
He leaned back.
She reached into a hidden pocket sewn into the side of her flower-girl dress.
A phone.
Her phone.
The father frowned.
“You were supposed to leave that downstairs.”
“I know.”
“Why did you bring it?”
“Because she came into my room this morning.”
The father went completely still.
His daughter unlocked the screen.
“I recorded.”
He stared.
“Recorded what?”
“She thought I was asleep.”
The girl opened a voice memo.
The father’s eyes remained on her face.
“Do you want me to hear it?”
She nodded.
He pressed play.
At first there was only fabric rustling.
Then footsteps.
A door closing.
The bride’s voice came clearly through the speaker.
Not the voice she used around him.
No sweetness.
No patience.