That was the last moment I still believed they loved me.

I did not know it yet.

I pulled up to the venue a little before three o’clock in the afternoon, nearly four hours late, my heart pounding with the specific dread of a bride who has kept everyone waiting — a small, ordinary dread, the dread of someone who thinks the worst thing that has happened today is that she is late.

The real thing waiting for me inside was of a completely different order, and I had no idea it was coming.