Chapter 4: What Amanda Was
Paul said nothing for a long moment.
His mother pushed back her chair and stood up.
"Paul.
What is she saying?"
"Mom, sit down—"
"I will not sit down.
What does she mean, Amanda isn't just your ex-wife?"
Amanda had gone the color of old paper.
She picked up her clutch from the table and held it against her chest like a shield.
"This isn't the place," Paul said.
"Then when is the place?" his mother snapped.
"Because two hundred people just heard a recording of you planning to defraud this girl's family, so I think the place is right now."
I had not expected that from his mother.
I filed it away.
Paul ran one hand through his hair — the gesture he always made when he was stalling.
I had watched him do it a hundred times.
I understood now that it meant he was choosing which version of the truth to offer.
"Amanda and I never fully ended things," he said finally.
"When I say never fully — I mean we stayed in contact.
More than I told Nora."
"How much more?" his mother asked.
He didn't answer.
I answered for him.
"They've been together the entire time Paul and I were engaged," I said.
"Eighteen months.
The same eighteen months my father spent planning this wedding."
Someone near the back of the room made a sound.
Not words.
Just a sound.
Paul's mother turned to look at Amanda.
It was not a kind look.
"You came to this wedding," she said slowly.
"You stood in this room.
You let him toast you."
Amanda's jaw tightened.
"I didn't write the toast."
"No.
You just smiled when he blew you a kiss in front of his bride."
"Barbara—"
"Don't." Paul's mother held up one hand.
"Don't say my name right now."
My father had moved away from the DJ booth and was standing beside me.
He didn't touch my arm or say anything.
He was just there, close enough that I could feel it.
Paul turned back to me.
The calculating look was gone now.
What replaced it was something I might have called genuine, once.
Before tonight.
"Nora.
I did feel something real.
At the beginning, I did."
"At the beginning," I repeated.
"Things got complicated."
"With Amanda."
"With the money." He said it quietly, like a confession.
"My business has been in trouble for two years.
I needed the capital.
Your grandfather's estate — your father mentioned the property trust at dinner once, back when we first started dating.
I looked into it.
I shouldn't have.
But I did."
"So you proposed to me because of a property clause."
"I proposed to you because I thought I could make both things work."
The silence that followed that sentence was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
Derek, his best man, stood up from the table.
He didn't say anything to Paul.
He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, looked at me once — an expression I couldn't fully read, somewhere between shame and sorrow — and walked toward the exit.
The scrape of his chair was the only sound.
Paul watched him go.
"Derek—"
Derek didn't turn around.
Paul's mother sat back down.
She folded her hands on the table in front of her and stared at them.
She looked, suddenly, like a much older woman than she had an hour ago.
"What happens now?" Paul asked.
He was looking at my father.
Dad considered him for a moment.
"That depends on your next decision," he said.
"What decision?"
"Whether you sign the annulment paperwork tonight, voluntarily, or whether we involve the family's legal team tomorrow morning and let them explain to a judge what that recording means."
Paul's eyes moved to me.
"You'd already prepared annulment papers."
"My father prepared them three weeks ago," I said.
"When I found out."
"You knew for three weeks."
"Yes."
"And you still went through with the ceremony."
"I wanted you to have the chance to tell me yourself." I held his gaze.
"You didn't."
Something moved across his face.
It wasn't quite guilt.
It was closer to the recognition of a specific kind of loss — not the loss of me, I understood that clearly, but the loss of the version of himself he'd believed he was managing to be.
"Where are the papers?" he asked.
My father reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Paul stared at the envelope.
"Now?" he said.
"Here?"
"There's a table," Dad said.
"There's a pen."
Amanda stood up again.
This time no one told her to sit.
"I'm sorry," she said.
It wasn't clear who she was saying it to.
She walked toward the exit without looking back.
Paul watched her go.
Then he took the envelope from my father's hand.
He didn't open it immediately.
He stood there holding it, and I watched him understand, in real time, that there was no version of the next hour that ended well for him.
The recording existed.
Derek had left.
His mother wouldn't look at him.
Two hundred people were sitting in complete silence, watching.
He opened the envelope.
He read the first page.
He looked up once — not at me, at the room, as if he was counting the witnesses.
Then he sat down, uncapped the pen, and signed.
My father took the papers back.
He checked the signature.
He nodded once.
"Thank you," he said to Paul.
Not warmly.
Just precisely.
May you like
Paul set the pen on the table.
He didn't stand up for a long time after that.
