Before Anyone Could Clap
Chapter 02 - Before Anyone Could Clap
No one moved.
A hundred and twelve guests sat beneath white linen canopies facing the ocean, and not one of them seemed to remember how to breathe.
Grant recovered first.
“This is insane,” he said. “Rebecca, she’s been harassing me for months.”
Celeste flinched as if he had slapped the air between them.
I kept my eyes on Grant.
“Do you know her?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation answered more than his words did.
“We worked together.”
Celeste let out a broken laugh.
“For eighteen months?”
My mother, Evelyn Hale, stood from the front row so quickly her chair tipped backward. My younger sister, Lauren, caught her arm.
Grant turned toward the guests.
“This woman is unstable. I’m sorry everyone has to see this.”
That sentence did something strange to me.
He did not say the messages were false.
He apologized for the scene.
I looked down at my lace sleeves and the wedding ring waiting in the officiant’s hand. Suddenly everything felt like a costume someone else had chosen for me.
“Five minutes,” I said.
Grant stared at me.
“What?”
“I need five minutes away from everyone.”
He reached for my hand again.
I stepped back.
The small motion caused a ripple through the guests.
The venue manager, Luke Bennett, was standing near the aisle. I had known Luke years ago in college, before life took us in opposite directions. He had been professional throughout the wedding planning, careful never to make our old friendship into something awkward.
Now he met my eyes and understood immediately.
“This way,” he said.
He led Celeste, my mother, Lauren, and me through a side garden into a private preparation room behind the catering kitchen.
Grant followed.
Luke blocked the doorway.
“She asked for five minutes.”
Grant’s expression hardened.
“I’m the groom.”
Luke did not move.
“Not for the next five minutes.”
For the first time that day, I almost smiled.
Then Celeste placed her phone on the table.
“There’s more,” she said.
She opened a folder of screenshots.
Hotel reservations.
Photographs.
Voice messages.
A calendar entry with Grant’s initials beside a downtown apartment address.
My mother sat down heavily.
Lauren whispered, “Oh my God.”
I did not cry.
Not yet.
I scrolled until I found a message dated three weeks earlier.
Grant had written: Rebecca still thinks the amendment is just estate planning. Once she signs, Thomas can finish the transfer.
Thomas.
My uncle.
My late father’s older brother.
The man who had spent the previous hour greeting guests as if he owned the day.
I looked at Celeste.
“Who is Thomas to Grant?”
Her face went pale.
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
She swallowed.
“Rebecca, Grant has been meeting with your uncle for almost a year.”
The door behind us opened.
Grant had found another entrance.
May you like
And when he saw which message I was reading, he stopped pretending to be angry.
He looked scared.
