At 8:15 PM Marisol found me on the loading dock.
I was wearing the navy scrubs from my trunk.
Bridal pins were still in my hair.
I'd stopped counting them at nine.
Wes sat on a milk crate by the dumpster.
His partners were eating dinner on the twelfth floor without him.
"You can go up," I'd told him at seven.
"I'm good here."
That made twice he'd said it.
The veil wasn't on his arm anymore.
I hadn't asked where it went.
Marisol stopped at the edge of the dock and lowered her voice.
"Mrs. Brueckner put in for an extension."
"Till 1:00 AM."
"Eighteen hundred dollars."
"On the master account."
"Mine," I said.
"Yours."
"It's pending."
"Only your signature posts it."
"What else?"
She checked the tablet.
"She told the bartenders to pour top shelf."
"That's consumption."
"It hits the card on file."
"Yours, until the client closes the event."
"How much by close?"
"Twenty-four hundred, at this pace."
That was twenty-four hundred dollars of other people's bourbon.
On my card.
Wes didn't say anything.
He looked at the tablet, then at me.
"And she told the guests you had a medical thing," Marisol said.
I'm an ER nurse.
I know what a medical thing looks like.
This wasn't one.
"Walk me to the ballroom."
At 8:38 PM Bryce was standing in the doors of the Grand Ballroom.
He'd been waiting.
The coral was still on his collar.
Nobody had told him.
Behind him, 180 people sat under chandeliers I'd picked out of a binder.
The Brass Pier was playing something slow.
"Come home."
"Put the dress back on and come home."
He looked at my scrubs like they were the problem.
"You're humiliating my mother."
Wes stepped up beside me.
"She's with me."
Bryce laughed once.
"You don't even know her."
"I know enough."
Bryce didn't move out of the doorway.
He didn't have to.
I could see past him.
Curt stood at the head table with the microphone.
Patrice beamed up at him.
Jordyn sat two seats down in silver silk.
Curt raised his glass.
"Patrice and I are proud to give these kids — well, to give all of you — this night."
People clapped.
Sixty of them were his clients.
I knew because Bryce had complained about the seating chart for a month.
I turned to Marisol.
"The event's mine."
"Close it."
She didn't ask if I was sure.
She touched the screen and lifted her radio.
"Close the ballroom."
"House lights, band, bar."
"All of it?" a voice asked back.
"All of it," I said.
At 8:41 PM the band stopped mid-bar.
The trumpet held one note too long, then quit.
Then the house lights came up.
Every light in the room came on, white and flat, like an exam room.
A hundred and eighty faces blinked at once.
Curt was still standing with his glass in the air.
The bartenders capped the top shelf.
The extension request died on Marisol's screen, unsigned.
Somebody's kid said, "Whoa."
Bryce spun around in the doorway.
"Turn them back on," he told Marisol.
"Only the client can do that, sir."
Patrice came across the dance floor in her champagne lace.
"She's canceling the party we paid for!"
She said it loud enough for the back tables.
"We gave her twenty-five thousand at the engagement party."
"There's a picture!"
A few people nodded.
They'd been at that party.
They'd seen the picture.
Wes heard it.
I watched him file it away.
Curt lowered his glass and sat down.
He didn't back her up.
He didn't correct her either.
I didn't answer her.
Not in a ballroom.
I stepped past Bryce onto the parquet.
"Dinner was mine," I told the room.
"Dessert's going to the ER night shift."
"Drive safe."
Nobody clapped.
Grandma Brueckner put her napkin on the table and reached for her purse.
Then a groomsman stood up.
Then the table behind him did.
"Can you box the cake?" I asked Marisol.
"Already on it."
She came back with a white birch box under her arm.
It had a slot in the lid.
"The card box," she said.
"A hundred twelve cards."
"It's client property."
She put it in my hands.
Patrice made a sound like I'd taken her purse.
"Those are for Bryce!"
Marisol didn't look at her.
"Client property, ma'am."
At 9:05 PM I stood at the valet stand with the box under one arm.
My car was coming up from the garage.
Wes stood beside me with his hands in his pockets.
Bryce came out through the revolving door.
He still had his boutonniere on.
"Lee."
"Where are you even going to sleep?"
"Home."
He almost smiled.
"Dad owns the house, Leah."