The priest began. “DAD!”
Liam had launched himself out of the pew and was running up the aisle, dress shoes pounding against the floor. At first, there was nervous laughter and a little ripple of indulgent smiles.
Andrew’s smile froze. “Liam—”
But Liam didn’t stop. He reached us, grabbed Andrew’s jacket with both hands, and looked up at him with a face so earnest and alarmed that my whole body went cold before he even spoke.
“Dad, you already have a wife,” Liam shouted. “Why are you marrying her?”
The amused chuckles continued, a little more hesitant now. I smiled, convinced Liam was confused, and Andrew would laugh it off.
But he didn’t. Andrew’s hand changed inside mine. It became clammy.
Slack. I looked at him. “Andrew?
What’s going on?”
He stared straight ahead like a deer caught in the headlights. I bent down in front of Liam. “Sweetheart, what do you mean?
Who is your dad already married to?”
He smiled brightly and turned to point toward the back of the church. “There she is,” he said loudly. “Dad’s wife.”
The room shifted around me.
Heads turning. Bodies twisting. A shockwave of whispers.
I stood and there, in one of the last pews, was a woman in her 30s I’d never seen before. Our gazes locked, and she bolted for the doors. I didn’t think.
I snatched up my skirts and sprinted down the aisle. I heard someone behind me gasp. Someone else said, “Oh my God.”
The woman reached the doors, but I caught her wrist before she could push one open.
She went still. Up close, she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “Who are you?” I asked.
The question came out sharper than I intended. Maybe harsher, too, but my pulse was roaring in my ears, and behind us the church had started buzzing like a hornet’s nest hit with a stick. She looked past me toward the altar.
Toward Andrew. “You should ask him,” she said quietly. Her throat moved.
She nodded once, like she had finally accepted something. “My name is Elena.”
“Are you his wife?”
Her eyes flicked to mine. “Not legally, but yes.”
The whispers behind me rose fast.
“No.”
“Did she say yes?”
I turned and saw Andrew still standing at the altar, pale as paper, his mother already on her feet in the front row with a look on her face like she had smelled smoke at a dinner party. “Andrew,” I called out. “Come here.
Now.”
He came down the aisle slowly, every eye in the room fixed on him. He looked like a boy caught stealing. “It’s not what it sounds like,” he said.
Someone behind us muttered, “It never is.”
I stepped aside so Elena and I were standing shoulder to shoulder, both facing him. “Then tell me what it is,” I said. Andrew dragged a hand through his hair.
“This is complicated.”
Elena let out one short, stunned laugh. “No, it isn’t.”
He shot her a warning look. “Please.”
She ignored him.
“You stood with me on a beach six years ago under a full moon and promised your life to me.”
A hush fell again. She lifted her left hand. There was a Claddagh ring on it.
“You put this on my finger. You told me I was your future. Say it didn’t happen.”
Andrew said nothing.
I looked at him and felt a calmness come over me that was colder than anger. “Why?” I asked. He refused to look at me.
“I’ll tell you why,” Elena said. Andrew looked up then, eyes wide with fear. “You are from a good family, and I’m not.” Elena’s lip quivered.
“From the start, he said we’d find a way to make it work, to make it official, but by the time Liam came along, I realized Andrew would never be able to love me in his world.”
I thought I was going to faint then. “Liam… you’re his mother?”
Tears filled her eyes. She nodded.
“Andrew’s parents were willing to accept him, the new heir to their family business, but not me. We tried to get married in secret, but his mother stopped us.”
In a flash, everything became clear. Andrew’s life with Elena had been frowned on, hidden.
Something soft and sincere and shameful all at once, apparently. But a life with me was public. Approved.
Strategically correct. From somewhere in the pews, a woman said, “So one woman gets his heart and the other gets the seating chart.”
A few people laughed, but it was the ugly kind. I rounded on Andrew.
