Chapter 1 — Dusty Rose or Burgundy

Two days before my wedding, I was standing in my bedroom with my phone in my hand, and in the space of a minute or two I learned everything I had somehow managed not to know about the man I was about to marry.

Nathan had called me on video from his parents’ house.

He wanted one last opinion on the decorations, he said — he was that kind of groom, or so I believed, the kind who cared about the color of the linens, who wanted my voice in every small choice.

“Dusty rose or burgundy?” he asked, walking down a hallway, the camera jogging with his steps.

“Dusty rose,” I said.

“It’ll go better with the flowers.”

“Perfect.” He smiled into the little screen, that easy warm smile I had trusted for three years.

“Hang on — my mom’s calling me on the other line.”

The screen went dark.

I assumed the call had ended.

I set the phone down on the dresser and turned to look, one more time, at the wedding dress hanging on the closet door, and I felt the ordinary nervous happiness of a woman two days out.

I had no way of knowing that the call had not ended at all — that the line was still open, and that the next voice I heard would take my whole life apart and, in doing so, save it.

I have gone back to that moment so many times — the last moment of the old life, the last few seconds in which I was still simply a happy bride with a small case of nerves.

I want to be fair to her, that woman looking at her dress in the afternoon light, because it is tempting, from where I stand now, to think of her as a fool.

She was not a fool.

She was a tired, hopeful, decent person who had wanted, for a very long time and against considerable evidence, to believe that good things could still happen to her — that after the grief and the struggle and the years of carrying everything alone, someone had finally come along who would help her carry it.

That is not foolishness.