“I suppose she will.”
She nodded. “Fine. That’s fine.”
Later that evening, I hugged my daughter goodbye and went back to my bedroom to make a plan on how to organize my things to move. As I was going through my dresser drawers, sorting through items to keep, toss, and donate, I imagined what Reid would say if he were here now, what he would think about me giving up the home we had shared for so long. But he wasn’t here. And, like my granddaughter, I had a responsibility to do what I thought was best, no matter what Meredith said.
I smiled as I pulled a worn fraternity pin from the top drawer, cold and heavy in my hand. Much of the gold plate had chipped to reveal dull, dark metal standing in its place. In some ways, it reminded me of myself. Different, changed, faded. But, underneath, that pin still held every magical feeling that it had the night I had received it, the week before my wedding—albeit from a man I did not marry. It still held the promise of something that couldn’t be seen with the eye but could be remembered by every cell. It was a pin that made me think; a pin that made me wonder what might have been. Not what could be. No. It was too late for that now.
Holding that pin was a tangible reminder of a hard-won lesson: There comes a time in every woman’s life where she must put her own happiness first. I was learning that lesson a little late. I would make sure my granddaughter didn’t suffer the same fate.
JULIAOff Schedule
Agetaway-car sceneisdramatic, and I liked the statement it made, something I wasn’t brave enough or bold enough to actually say out loud: I wasn’t coming back. But as I looked out the back seat window, I remembered how devastated Hayes had looked the first night I met him, the night his mother had left him. I couldn’t just run away with no explanation, could I?
“Oh no,” I groaned.
“No second thoughts now,” Babs said.
“Jules!” Sarah scolded.
“No second thoughts,” I said. “But I forgot my purse.”
“No problem,” Sarah said. “Babs, you pull up to the church. I’ll sneak around to the side entrance to get it.”
But as we pulled up, I could see Hayes standing at the edge of the lawn looking for… Well, me, I assumed. I knew I had to talk to him.
Hayes’s face lit up when he saw me get out of the car. “Oh,thank God,” he said. “For a minute I thought we had a runaway bride situation on our hands.”
He was trying to maintain his usual upbeat attitude, but I could see in his face that he knew what was happening.
I shook my head, tears filling my eyes.
“Jules,” he said softly. “It’s okay. We still have five minutes before the service starts. We can pretend this never happened.”
I was swamped with guilt. I had sworn I would never leave him. “I can’t marry you, Hayes. I’m sorry.”
“Jules, come on. We’ve been through all this.”
“I love you,” I whispered. “But I can’t live my life like this.”
“But—”
I put my hand up. “I can’t marry someone I don’t trust.”
“After all this time, after all these years, after all thislove, you trust an old video more than you trust me?”
That was the root of the problem—I trusted an anonymous video more than I trusted the man I was supposed to marry. Even still, I let him pull me to him one last time; I let him kiss me. Even after all these years, he made me melt; because of all these years, we fit together seamlessly. I felt breathless in his arms. Just as I was about to change my mind about leaving him, though, I thought of Chrissy Matthews. Had he made her feel breathless too? Did he have what we had with someone else? My heart shattered all over again.
“I can’t go through with it, Hayes. I’m sorry.”
He just shook his head, staring at the ground. Then he looked back up at me. “Go on our honeymoon.”
“What?”
“Right now. Change your ticket on your Delta app. Get your bags out of my trunk. Take some time. Clear your head.” Herubbed my arms. “You’ll come back to me after you do some thinking. I know you will.”
That was when I knew, for sure, that he had cheated on me. Jilted men do not offer free honeymoons if they don’t feel guilty about something. They just don’t.
As I climbed back into Babs’s car to leave the church for the second time that day, Alice ran out, clipboard in hand. “Where have you been? We’re off schedule!”
