PART 9 – The Choice I Could No Longer Avoid

I stayed beside the suitcase longer than I meant to.

The ivory gown rested inside its garment bag, protected from dust and wrinkles. Its pearl buttons were hidden beneath the folded fabric, waiting for a day that no longer felt certain.

I touched the zipper but did not open it.

For months, I had imagined this morning as the beginning of my life with Carter. Now I was trying to understand whether the life I had imagined had ever really existed.

My phone lay on the bedside table.

I picked it up, checked the screen, and put it down again.

There was no message from Carter.

I told myself that the silence meant nothing. He might have been busy with the wedding arrangements. He might have been getting dressed. He might have been wondering why I had not called.

I could invent a dozen explanations, and none would tell me the truth.

That was what frightened me most.

I had spent so much time explaining away the little things that I had forgotten how to ask whether they deserved an explanation.

I went to the mirror again.

The uneven patches on my scalp were impossible to ignore. My hair had been cut so roughly that there was no way to pretend someone had simply given me a bad haircut.

Whoever had done it had wanted me to see what they had done.

I touched the small cut near my ear and winced.

The pain was minor compared with the questions running through my mind, but it reminded me that this was not a dream. I had woken up to a real injury, and I had to make a real decision about what happened next.

I returned to the bed and sat down.

My grandfather's photograph rested near the lamp. Arthur Bennett had always looked serious in pictures, even when he was happy. His eyes had a way of making people feel that he was listening to something they had not yet said.

I lifted the frame.

"I wish you were here," I whispered.

The room gave me no answer.

I remembered the conversation we had three years earlier, when he had first spoken about the inheritance. I had been impatient then. I wanted him to stop treating every important decision as if it were a legal examination.

He had only smiled.

A man who loves you will build a life with you.

A man who loves your money will build his life on top of it.

I had promised him I would remember.

Then Carter came into my life, and I decided that my grandfather's warning was something I could safely leave in the past.

I had loved Carter's confidence. I had loved how easily he made strangers feel welcome and how quickly he could turn an uncomfortable moment into a joke.

I had believed those qualities meant he was kind.

Perhaps they did.

But charm was not proof of character, and I could no longer confuse the two.

I put the photograph back.

The wedding was supposed to begin with a promise. I had thought the difficult part would be standing in front of everyone and saying the words that would bind Carter and me together.

Now the difficult part was deciding whether I could say them honestly.

I did not want to punish him for something I could not prove.

I also did not want to punish myself by pretending nothing had happened.

Both choices frightened me for different reasons.

I reached for my phone again and opened Margaret's contact.

She had been my grandfather's attorney for twenty-two years. She knew how to separate what a person felt from what a person could establish, and she had never encouraged me to confuse suspicion with evidence.

I needed that steadiness now.

I called her.

She answered after two rings.

"Rachel?"

"I'm here."

"How are you feeling?"

I looked toward the mirror.

"Not very good."

There was a short silence.

"Are you hurt?"

"Only a little. There's a cut near my ear."

"Have you had it looked at?"

"No."

"Please don't ignore it just because you have other things on your mind."

I promised I would take care of it.

Then I told her I still had not decided what to do about the wedding.

Margaret did not rush to fill the silence.

I appreciated that more than I could explain.

"I don't want to make a decision because I'm frightened," I said. "But I don't want to go through with something just because everyone expects me to."

"Those are two different reasons to make a decision," she replied. "Neither one should make it for you."

I closed my eyes.

"I keep thinking about what Grandfather said."

"Arthur wanted you to choose carefully. He did not ask you to spend your life suspecting everyone."

"I know."

"And he certainly did not ask you to ignore something that frightened you."

I pressed my fingers against the edge of the bedspread.

"What if I get this wrong?"

"You may not be able to know everything today. That doesn't mean you must decide everything today."

I wanted her to tell me what to do.

I wanted someone older and wiser to take the choice away from me so I could blame them if it went badly.

But Margaret would not do that.

She had never treated my inheritance as a reason to control my life. She had treated it as something my grandfather had placed in my care.

"The trust is still protected," she reminded me. "Nothing about this morning changes that. You don't have to sign anything or agree to anything because someone expects you to."

"Thank you."

"Rachel, one more thing."

I straightened.

"Don't let the wedding schedule become more important than your judgment."

After we ended the call, I sat quietly for several minutes.

The advice did not solve anything.

It did give me room to think.

I went to the bathroom and gently washed the area around the cut. The water stung, and I used a clean towel to dry my skin without rubbing it.

Then I returned to the bedroom.

The gown was still waiting.

I no longer saw it as a promise I had to keep. It was a dress I had chosen when I believed I understood the man I was going to marry.

That belief had changed.

I had not yet decided whether everything else had to change with it.

I folded the towel and placed it beside the sink.

Then I picked up the phone and looked at Carter's name.

I did not call him.

Not yet.

I needed to know what I wanted to ask before I heard whatever answer he might give.

For the first time that morning, I stopped trying to make the wedding happen and allowed myself to consider whether I wanted it to happen at all.

Click here to continue reading: PART 10: What I Could Prove