The Bride Who Walked Away

ess, my hands clutching a bouquet of lilies so tightly my knuckles were white. The guests murmured in the pews,

ltar. A text message: "Chloe needs

he papers. His phone rang. He looked at me, his face pale with apology

he had promised that Chloe Davis and her daughter were in the past. I believed him. I

irt, his hair a mess, carrying a small, sleeping girl in his

wn the aisle toward me. The guests went silent, their

hloe just told me. She's sick, she needs a father, she needs me." He looked at me with those desperate eyes

All the times he ran to them, all the money he gave them, all the nights I spent alone while he was pl

ne. She was the picture of a worried mother, but

fellowship in architecture, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I had turned it down to build a life with him

rose inside me. This was not g

ed forward, putting a hand on Ethan's arm. "We didn't want to hurt you. But Li

ion hung in the air, thick and ugly. Ethan's face harde

of its earlier warmth. "They just want to ask you a few questions.

ngs, drawing plans at the kitchen table, him kissing my neck and telling me I was his whole world. It all felt like a

ht I would spend my life with, now a stranger accusing me of something monstrous. I looked at the wom

finger. The ring he had given me on a beautiful evening, promising f

Everything you ever gave me is yours." I dropped the ring. It clattered on

, on the wreckage of my life, an