Chapter 1

"Just one shot, Maren," he said. "Audra knows how to make me look like myself."

Russell let go of my hand before I could answer.

I looked down at my wedding dress.

I was still wearing it.

Our photographer was supposed to be a man named Drew.

That morning, Russell told me Drew had come down with the flu and the studio had sent an emergency fill-in.

When Audra walked in, Russell stopped for half a second.

Then he laughed. "What are the odds?"

I believed him.

That was the habit I had built with Russell.

He told me what happened, and I handled whatever came next.

For seven years, that arrangement had looked enough like trust that I stopped checking the seams.

Now Audra was raising her camera, telling him to kick off his dress shoes and roll up his sleeves.

Russell obeyed before she even finished the sentence.

His fingers had been laced through mine thirty seconds earlier.

Now his hand fell to his side, completely at ease in her space.

They had dated through college, before Russell became a teacher and Audra began traveling with a camera.

Until that afternoon, she had only been a story he brought up after two drinks.

Now she was stepping into his personal space to straighten his collar.

"You still carry stress in your left shoulder," she said.

Russell laughed and rolled the shoulder back, leaning into her touch. "You remember that?"

"Same pose as senior year." Audra lifted the viewfinder to her eye. "Don't look at the window. Look at me."

He did, and then he smiled.

It was the open smile from his old college photos.

I couldn't remember the last time he had smiled at me that way.

We had booked this portrait session early because of Russell's sixteen-year-old daughter, Willa.

She was making the welcome board for the reception and had left an empty frame right in the center for a print of Russell and me.

That morning, she had texted me three times asking if we'd picked the shot yet.

An assistant glanced up from the monitor. "Do you want the bride out of frame?"

Audra looked at Russell instead of me.

"For this one," she said.

Russell heard her.

He stayed beneath the lights.

The corner of his mouth lifted before he looked back into Audra's lens.

The shutter clicked. "Just a few more," Audra said.

I turned to the assistant beside me and handed over my bouquet of cream roses.

"If she wants you alone," I said, "she can photograph you alone. Just don't call it a wedding portrait."

Russell frowned. "Maren, come on—"

"Take the picture, Audra."

I walked past the light stands and waited by the dressing rooms until they wrapped.

The drive back to our townhouse was quiet.

Russell drove with one hand resting on the steering wheel, tapping his fingers along to the radio.

"Did you know Audra would be there?" I asked.

His thumb missed a beat against the wheel.

"They told me the replacement was A. Keene," Russell said. "I didn't make the connection until she walked through the door."

"She didn't look surprised to see you."

"She's a professional, Maren." He turned the volume knob two clicks to the right. "Don't make this weird."

A minute later, he cleared his throat. "Did you remember Willa's allergy pills?"

"They're in my purse," I said.

He nodded and watched the road.

I had picked up the prescription between patients during my lunch break.

Russell hadn't asked whether I'd had time.

He had only asked whether it was done.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

Willa's name lit up the screen: [Did the pictures turn out? Send me the one you want in the middle.]

I locked the screen and placed the phone facedown on the console.

When we walked through the front door, Russell went straight to the kitchen island and pulled a stack of essays from his bag.

"Leave the pharmacy bag by the microwave," he said.

I set the small white paper bag on the counter.

"Thanks, babe," he muttered without looking up.

I walked down the hallway into the spare bedroom and closed the door.

The white wedding binder was in the bottom drawer of the desk.

I pulled it out and turned to the venue page.

I folded the seating chart over Russell's name.

Then I dialed the number.

The line connected after two rings. "The Birch Room, this is Bonnie."

"Hi, Bonnie. It's Maren Ellis. I need to cancel my wedding."

A quiet beat stretched between us.

"Maren, your wedding is next Saturday."

"I know."

"You'll lose the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit."

"I can email the cancellation form now," Bonnie said.

The contract was in my name.

So was the card she had charged in March.

Losing the deposit meant postponing the transmission repair on my twelve-year-old Subaru.

I knew exactly what that choice would cost me, and I made it anyway.

From the kitchen, Russell was humming as he graded papers.

"Send it," I said. "Give the date to someone else."