Chapter 3 - The Fallout at the Altar
While Daniel sat beside my hospital bed holding my hand, three miles away at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church on Mercer Island, absolute disaster was unfolding.
Vanessa’s royal-themed wedding was scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m.
By 11:15, the three-tier custom cake was sitting unattended in the reception hall. By 11:30, two hundred guests sat in carved oak pews, whispering nervously among themselves as the string quartet played their fourth consecutive rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon.
In the bridal suite behind the altar, Vanessa was losing her mind.
She paced back and forth across the Persian rug, her white lace veil dragging behind her, her phone clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles were entirely white.
“Mother is not answering her phone!” Vanessa screamed, glaring at her bridesmaids, who stood frozen in their champagne-colored dresses. “How can she not be answering her phone?! She’s supposed to be bustling my train right now!”
The heavy oak door of the bridal suite creaked open.
Robert Bennett walked in. He looked older than his sixty-two years, his gray suit slightly rumpled, his face pale and drawn. Behind him stood Marjorie, who had just arrived back from the hospital, her silver gown looking dusty near the hem where she had tripped outside the emergency entrance.
“Robert! Where have you been?!” Vanessa wailed, rushing toward her father. “Where is Mother? The guests are staring! Where is Daniel? Why isn't Daniel here?”
Marjorie pushed past her husband, her face twisted in a mask of bitter fury.
“Your brother has chosen his side, Vanessa,” Marjorie declared, her voice trembling as she threw her handbag onto the velvet couch. “He chose that ungrateful, conniving wife of his over our family.”
Vanessa stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth opening in shock. “What? What are you talking about? Where is Daniel? He promised he’d be here to walk me down the aisle if Dad couldn't!”
“Your brother,” Robert said heavily, sinking into an armchair, “physically assaulted your mother at the hospital this morning and declared he is cutting all ties with us.”
The silence in the bridal suite was absolute. One of the bridesmaids dropped her bouquet of white roses; the flowers hit the floor with a soft, muted thud.
“He... he assaulted you?” Vanessa whispered, her voice shaking with rage and humiliation. “On my wedding day?! Because of Claire? Because she decided to pull some dramatic stunt with her appendix?!”
“She staged the whole thing!” Marjorie shrieked, tears of pure malice springing to her eyes. “She couldn't bear the thought of you having a perfect day! She wanted to ruin us, and Daniel played right into her hands!”
Vanessa stared at her mother, then looked down at her immaculate white gown. The dream wedding she had spent eighteen months curating—the wedding designed to prove to high society that the Bennetts were untouchable—was collapsing into an embarrassing public farce.
“Get him on the phone,” Vanessa hissed, tears of fury spilling down her cheeks. “Call Daniel right now. Tell him if he doesn't walk through those church doors in ten minutes, he is dead to me too.”
Marjorie pulled out her phone with trembling fingers and dialed.
The phone rang twice before it went straight to voicemail.
She tried again. Straight to voicemail.
Daniel had blocked both of their numbers.
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Ten minutes later, the doors of the church sanctuary opened, but it wasn't Daniel walking down the aisle. It was Robert Bennett, looking defeated and weary, stepping up to the altar to announce to two hundred bewildered guests that the ceremony was experiencing a brief, unforeseen delay.
By 1:00 p.m., the guests began leaving in droves, whispering behind their programs about the scandalous collapse of the Bennett family dynasty.
