Chapter 3

I opened our shared wedding email on my phone.

We had set it up six months ago to handle vendors and guest lists without clogging our work inboxes.

Both of our phones had access, but Russell rarely opened it unless I asked him to review a catering contract.

I typed Aura into the search bar.

Six emails popped up.

Five were standard receipts from January for our initial session deposit.

The sixth was dated three weeks ago.

The subject line was: Booking Update / Hale-Ellis Session #4812.

I tapped it open.

There was no contract attached, only a short note from the studio coordinator:

"Hi Russell, per your request, Drew Lawson has been removed from Saturday's booking. Audra Keene will photograph the session instead. As requested, future questions about the photographer change will go to your Riverview High email."

I sat at the desk, staring at the short paragraph.

He hadn't bumped into an old flame by accident.

He had arranged the swap twenty-one days earlier and sent the paper trail to his school account.

The North Star Camera charge was separate, but it had happened the same week.

The two choices fit together too neatly to be an accident.

I checked the date on the camera-store charge again.

It had cleared nine minutes after the studio sent the change order.

Russell had not made one panicked decision.

He had opened our wedding email, changed the photographer, bought Audra's equipment, and redirected the replies.

Each step had required him to stop and continue.

I printed the email on the desktop printer in the corner.

The tray slid out with a single sheet of paper.

I took the warm page, stood up, and opened the door.

Russell was on the living room couch, a fresh beer open on the side table.

When he heard my footsteps, he set the bottle down, lifting a hand to head off another argument.

"Maren, look," he said, keeping his voice carefully measured. "We're exhausted. We've been planning this for a year—"

I laid the printout flat on the coffee table between his knees.

Russell looked down.

His eyes tracked across the header: Per your request, Drew Lawson has been removed.

He didn't move.

The easy, tired patience he used on argumentative teenagers evaporated.

"Drew didn't have the flu," I said.

Russell's throat bobbed.

He reached for the paper, but his hand hesitated and pulled back.

"Her camera bag was damaged on a flight," he said. "She couldn't afford to replace the lenses, so I bought them. It was a loan."

"A loan from both of us?"

"I was going to put it back before the final venue payment."

"That wasn't what I asked."

Russell rubbed both hands over his face. "If I had asked, you would have said no."

"Then you already knew the answer."

"So you used our wedding money without asking me."

"I thought I could fix it before you found out."

There it was.

Not remorse.

Just the regret of getting caught before he could balance the ledger.

"And putting her behind the camera at our portrait session?" I asked. "Did that help her pay it back?"

Russell looked away, staring toward the dark front window. "The studio needed to see what she could do with a portrait setup. It was a referral, Maren. That was all."

"You asked the studio manager to divert the change-order emails to your school account so I wouldn't know."

He pressed his lips into a tight, miserable line.

"I wanted closure," he said softly, looking down at his palms. "That was all it was. I just wanted closure before we stood at that altar."

"Closure?"

"Yes," he insisted, his voice cracking with sudden, raw frustration. "I wanted her to see me. I wanted her to see that I had built a solid life, that I was happy, that I was marrying a remarkable woman and moving on."

I looked at him—really looked at him—and the anger in my chest turned into something hollow and cold.

"You didn't want closure, Russell," I said. "You wanted an audience."

Russell stared at me as if the sentence had come from someone else.

"I wanted her to know I turned out fine," he said.

"You were about to marry me. Why did her opinion still get a vote?"

He looked toward the window.

That was the first honest answer he gave me.

From upstairs came the soft thud of Willa dropping her backpack.

She called down to ask whether we wanted pizza or tacos for dinner.

Russell answered, "Pizza," in the same ordinary voice he used every Friday.

I watched him switch from exposed fiancé to dependable father in a breath.

It would have been easier if one version had been fake.

He opened his mouth, but before the words could form, his phone vibrated against the glass table.

The screen flashed with a notification banner from Instagram:

[North Loop Portrait Studio tagged you in a new post.]

I didn't have to unlock it to know whose face would be turned toward the camera.