Chapter 6: What the Guests Didn't Know
Diane looked at my face when I came back into the side room and immediately said, "Emma, sweetheart, can you go count how many petals are left in your basket?
I think there might be exactly one hundred."
Emma considered this seriously and decided it was worth investigating.
She carried her basket to the far corner and began counting under her breath.
I handed Diane the envelope.
She read in silence.
Her expression moved through several things — surprise, then anger, then something quieter and harder.
"A warrant," she said.
"Yes."
"He had an active warrant and he was going to walk down that aisle."
"Yes."
She handed the envelope back.
"What do you need?"
"I need to know if any of this is legally actionable today.
Right now.
Not eventually."
Diane pulled out her phone.
"My cousin is a family attorney.
I'm calling her."
"It's a Saturday."
"She owes me." Diane was already dialing.
She stepped into the corridor.
I sat down near Emma.
She had gotten to forty-seven and was recounting from the beginning because she thought she may have miscounted a cluster near the handle.
"Emma."
She looked up.
"You did a brave thing today," I said.
"Bringing me that package.
I know Daddy told you not to."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Are you and Daddy still getting married?"
"I don't know yet."
She nodded, as though this were a reasonable answer.
Then: "Is the lady in the gray coat going to take me away?"
I looked at her carefully.
"Do you want her to?"
She picked up a petal and turned it over in her fingers.
"I don't know her," she said.
"But she has a nice face." A pause.
"Is she my real mommy?"
"I think she might be, yes."
Emma absorbed this.
"Does that mean you're not my mommy?"
My chest pulled tight.
"It means you might have two people who want to take care of you.
And that's not a bad thing."
She thought about that.
"Like how some kids have two houses?"
"Something like that."
She went back to counting.
Forty-eight.
Forty-nine.
Diane came back in.
She tilted her head toward the door and I followed her into the corridor.
"My cousin says the warrant is real and still active — she checked the public record just now on her phone.
Ryan would have known it was still open.
You can't accidentally not know about a family court warrant." Diane kept her voice low.
"She also says that if Cassandra has documentation of the custody violation, she has grounds to file an emergency motion for access.
Today won't settle anything legally, but it starts the clock."
"What about the marriage certificate?
Our ceremony today?"
"If he's still legally married to Cassandra, your ceremony would have been void.
You would have signed a license that was fraudulent from the start." She paused.
"You were forty minutes from that."
Forty minutes.
"I need to make a phone call," I said.
"Who?"
"My brother.
He's a notary and he knows a solicitor." I was already reaching for my phone.
"I want someone with legal standing here before Ryan decides to reframe this to the guests."
"You think he'd do that?"
I thought about the way Ryan had looked when I confronted him.
Not ashamed.
Frustrated.
The expression of a man recalibrating, not surrendering.
"Yes," I said.
"I think he'd do exactly that."
I stepped toward the garden door to make the call.
Through the small window beside it I could see the reception tables still set, the champagne still waiting.
A caterer was standing near the far hedge, checking his phone, uncertain whether to begin service or not.
My phone rang before I could dial.
The screen said: Ryan.
I stared at it for two rings.
Then I answered.
"Lauren." His voice was different now.
Smoother.
The frustration had been put away somewhere and something more careful had replaced it.
"I've been thinking.
I want to come and talk to you and Emma together.
I think if we all sit down—"
"Don't come to this room," I said.
A pause.
"Lauren—"
"I mean it, Ryan.
Don't come near Emma right now."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I spoke to my attorney," he said.
"He says the warrant is a clerical issue.
It was supposed to be dismissed eighteen months ago.
There was a filing error on the court's side.
It's being corrected."
"Your attorney told you this just now?
On a Saturday?"
Silence.
"Ryan," I said.
"Stop."
I ended the call.
Through the chapel wall, faintly, I could hear the guests beginning to murmur again — the sound of a hundred people running out of patience and starting to talk among themselves.
Ryan was going to walk back in there soon.
He was going to stand at the front of that room and say something, and whatever he said would become the version of events that most of those people carried home.
May you like
I looked at the envelope in my hand.
Not if I got there first.
