The Livestream That Ended Her Wedding Vows

Six monitors. Six angles. One bride.

Me.

I leaned over the folding table in the third-floor conference room I'd commandeered as my command center, tapping the screen for Camera Four. "Tilt up two degrees. The arch cuts off the groom's head."

"Copy that, Mira."

I straightened, pressed my palm flat against the table, and breathed.

Under the monitor sat a folded photocopy. My condo deed. The notary's stamp still bled blue at the edges. A red checkmark sat in the corner where I'd marked it this morning at 5 a.m., barefoot, in my robe.

Calloway Events. First booking.

The bride was me.

"Mira?" Tomas, my lead camera op, crackled in my earpiece. "Run me through one more time."

"Once more." I pulled my hair off my neck. "Cam One, ceremony wide. Cam Two, groom's face. Cam Three, my face. Cam Four, the arch. Cam Five, guest reactions. Cam Six—" I held up a finger. "Cam Six is the one I'm going to repeat until you hate me."

"Bridal suite hallway."

"Bridal suite hallway." I pointed at the screen showing the cream-papered corridor outside Room 318. "That cam does not turn off. Not when I'm getting touched up. Not when I'm crying. Not when somebody spills champagne. It runs from now until I walk down that aisle."

"Got it."

"Tomas." I waited until he looked into his lens. "My grandmother is in a hospice in Bangor with a tube up her nose. She has maybe a month. She's watching this on an iPad my cousin is holding to her face. If that camera blinks, she misses me leaving the room in a wedding dress. Understood?"

A pause. "Won't blink, Mira."

"Thank you."

I clicked off the comm and exhaled.

The door behind me opened without a knock.

"You're already barking orders," Damon said. "Bride of the year."

Damon Vance. My fiancé in seventy-three minutes. His tie hung loose around his collar. His jacket wasn't buttoned. He looked like a man who had three espressos and zero nerves.

"You're not dressed."

"I'm dressed enough." He came around behind me, set both hands on my bare shoulders, and hummed. "Turn around."

"Damon, I have to—"

"Turn around, Calloway."

I turned.

He found the zipper at the small of my back. The dress was ivory silk crepe, twelve fittings, paid for in installments. He drew the zipper up, slow, until the bodice closed against my ribs.

He bent. Pressed his mouth to my shoulder blade.

"There," he murmured. "Sealed in."

"Like a Tupperware lid."

"Like a contract." His lips brushed up to my ear. "If you fumble your vows, I'm reading mine off my phone, and people will know."

I laughed. Real laugh. Loud enough that Lacey, on her way through the door, paused.

It would be the last time he made me laugh that day.

I didn't know that yet.

"Mira." Lacey Bloom, my assistant, all of twenty-three, came in clutching the bridal bouquet like a newborn. "Bridesmaids are lined up. Hair's done on everyone. Um."

"Um what."

"Sienna." Lacey winced. "Sienna changed."

"Changed what."

"Her dress."

I picked up my lipstick and turned to the small mirror clipped to the monitor stand. "Into."

"Red."

The lipstick stopped halfway to my mouth.

"What shade of red."

"Like." Lacey swallowed. "Like a fire-truck red. Floor length. Slit up to here."

Damon, behind me, made a low noise. "On the maid of honor."

"On the maid of honor," Lacey confirmed.

I set the lipstick down. I counted, in my head, the way my therapist taught me. One. Two. Three.

"It's fine," I said. "Let her wear it."

"Mira—"

"Lacey. It's fine. Today everything is fine."

Damon caught my eye in the mirror. He didn't say anything. He just lifted one eyebrow, the way he did when he thought I was being too gracious for my own good.

"Go," I told Lacey. "Tell the girls to line up by height. Sienna goes last."

"Last?"

"She wants to be seen, let her be the punctuation."

Lacey nodded and slipped out, bouquet bobbing.

Damon's hand found mine. "You okay, my best friend in the whole world?"

"I'm great. I'm getting married."

"That's not an answer."

I squeezed his fingers. "I'm great."

He kissed my knuckles and let me go. "I'm heading down. Don't stand me up."

"Couldn't afford to."

The door clicked shut behind him.

I looked at the monitors one more time. Cam Six was steady on the empty hallway. Indicator light: red. Recording standby.

My grandmother's name was Ada. She used to braid my hair for school and tell me a Calloway woman never let anybody see her sweat. She was eighty-six pounds now. She'd asked me, last visit, if she'd live to see me married. I'd said yes before I had a fiancé. Before I had a venue. Before I had anything.

I'd built this whole day around that yes.

I picked up the photocopy of my condo deed. Two hundred and forty thousand dollars, leveraged for cameras, lighting, florals, and a hospice livestream feed encrypted to a single iPad in Maine.

I tucked the deed back under the monitor.

Every chip I owned, on this table.

I opened the door.

The hallway smelled like lilies and somebody's hair spray. I walked. Past the photo wall. Past the gift table. At the sign-in podium I stopped and adjusted the leather guest book. Quarter inch to the left. Quarter inch back. The pen parallel to the spine.

I'd practiced this pose four times in the mirror at home. The straightening of the book. The half-smile down at it. This was the picture. This was the second I'd told myself, for two years, would be the happiest of my life.

I held it.

Then I let it go and kept walking.

Room 318 was at the end. Tomas was posted at the corner with the Steadicam strapped to his rig. He gave me a thumbs up. I gave him an OK sign back, finger and thumb pressed tight.

"Going live in five," he mouthed.

I pushed open the bridal suite door.

Turned, one last time, toward the camera. Smiled the smile I'd been saving.

The indicator light on the Steadicam flicked from red to green.

Live.

I stepped inside. Left the door cracked, ten centimeters, the way the shot list called for. Soft light spilling out into the hall, my grandmother's window into a moment she'd waited her whole granddaughter's life to see.

Behind me, at the far end of the corridor, a streak of red moved across the carpet.

Sienna's dress. A flash of crimson, the slit catching air, fabric whispering against her calf.

She wasn't walking toward the ceremony.

She was walking the other way.

Down the hall, past the elevator bank, toward a door I couldn't see from where I stood.

The bridal suite door drifted half an inch wider on its hinge.

Cam Six kept rolling.