Chapter 1 - The Hiss at the Altar
The bride's belly hissed when my ten-year-old son touched it with a silver pin.
It was a small sound. Under the string lights at White Cedar Gardens, with the wedding guests watching, it might have passed for somebody opening a soda. But I heard it. So did Brielle. Her hands flew to the front of her cream-colored gown.
"Owen, what have you done?" I shouted.
My son stood on the runner between the folding chairs. His suit was too big at the shoulders, and his face was as pale as the roses on the altar. He held the pin away from his body like something that had burned him.
"Dad, she isn't having a baby. I told you."
Brielle took a step back. The round curve beneath her gown softened on one side. A narrow seam opened where the satin met a layer of padded fabric. I watched air escape from a small bladder strapped beneath the dress.
For five months I had spoken to that belly. I had let Owen pick a tiny yellow blanket for the little sister he'd been promised.
"It's support padding," Brielle said. "Daniel, don't let him humiliate me."
I looked at the pin. "Owen, you could have hurt someone."
"I knew where the air part was," he whispered. "I saw her put it on. But there's another one, Dad. Another lie."
He pulled out his phone. His fingers shook so badly he almost dropped it. Then a woman's voice came through the little speaker: "Tomorrow he's supposed to marry me. I told him to keep quiet. He must never tell Daniel."
I knew that voice as well as I knew my own. Brielle's.
Somebody in the last row rose so quickly his chair folded against the gravel. A broad man in a dark blue suit started toward my son.
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"Turn that recording off," the man said. "Right now."
And Brielle, who had never looked frightened of anyone, called him by a name I had never heard: "Colin, don't."
