“I’ll meet him properly tomorrow,” he told me over the phone that night, his voice thick with congestion but still warm. “When I walk you down to him. That’s the right way to do it, Addie. Face to face, the day it actually counts.”
Then the wedding day arrived.
PART 2
We stood together outside the tall wooden doors of St. Aldric’s, my father’s arm looped through mine, both of us listening to the muffled swell of music starting up on the other side.
I could hear the rustle of my own dress. I could smell the white roses lining the aisle even through the closed doors. I could feel my father’s breathing beside me, slightly uneven, though I told myself it was just nerves, or the last edge of that fever finally clearing out of his system.
The doors opened.
Miles stood at the altar. Tall. Composed. Dark suit, the same patient half-smile he always wore when he was trying not to show how nervous he actually was.
He smiled at me the moment our eyes met.
Then my father froze completely beside me.
His fingers dug into my arm hard enough that I gasped, and he took a full step backward, stumbling, and I barely managed to catch him before he lost his footing entirely.
“Dad?” I whispered, my heart suddenly hammering. “What’s wrong?”
The music seemed to fade into the background, swallowed by something heavier moving through the room. Even the candlelight along the aisle seemed to dim, though I know now that was only my own panic doing that to my vision.
Dad wasn’t looking at me at all.
He was staring straight past me, down the length of the aisle, directly at Miles.
“No,” he breathed, barely audible. “No, this can’t be.”
