Chapter 2

Two days later my husband walked into my studio. I’m wearing a mask I prepared earlier. So he looked straight through me.

His hand was on her back. He didn't recognize me. Or he did, and decided I wasn't worth it. With Seb you never know which is crueler.

"Babe, this is the planner." Chloe beamed. "She's a genius."

"Sure." He dropped onto my couch, already scrolling. "Whatever she wants."

Eleven years. Furniture in under a second.

Chloe ran the meeting like a general.

"Flowers -- no white ranunculus anywhere. His ex was obsessed with it. So basic."

I wrote it down. They were in my bouquet.

"Old photos of him, from before? Burned. I don't want her ghost at my wedding."

"Nothing from before survives," I said.

Then she slid a page across the desk. "His vows. He wrote them himself -- he's not a words guy, but he tried. Can you polish it?"

I opened it.

You are the calm in a life I built too loud.

I knew the next line before I read it. I knew all of them. His hands around mine. The church. Tears he actually cried.

He didn't write her a new vow. He photocopied mine.

So I read it out loud.

"Do you mind? I like to hear a vow in the room. Tells me if it carries."

I read his own words back to him. In my voice. The exact words he swore to me eleven years ago.

Seb's phone slipped out of his hand. He caught it.

I kept going. Slow.

By the last line his knuckles were white around his coffee.

"Babe?" Chloe touched his arm. "You okay? You're white as a sheet."

"Coffee's hot." His voice cracked on it.

"It's a beautiful vow." I set the page down gently. "You must have meant every word."

He looked at me then. Really looked. Something moving behind his eyes -- not quite recognition. Just a man whose body remembered something his brain wouldn't let him.

"...Every word," he said. "All mine."

"On record?" I tapped my phone. Light. Professional. "I always confirm authorship -- for the program."

His jaw tightened.

"All mine. Every word."

I peeled off a fresh tab and slid the vow into my book, behind the date, behind the flowers. The little colored flags had doubled since Monday. Every one a thing they'd handed me.

I didn't look up. Already onto the next line item.

Seb didn't touch his coffee again. He kept glancing at me -- quick, uneasy, the way you check a stair that just creaked under you.

The furniture had made a sound. And he couldn't figure out why it scared him.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"No." He stood too fast. "You've got what you need."

I closed the cover on the loaded page.

The vows weren't the biggest thing he'd given me that afternoon.