Beyond the Point(89)
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he’d said. “I thought in person would be best.”
“You could have just called.”
The rest of his trip had passed in awkwardness, until Dani had hugged him at the airport, promising that she’d do what he’d asked and book her ticket.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she’d said, aching. “I’m happy for you guys.”
Now, walking among the chaos of the market, Dani allowed herself to feel everything she’d been avoiding. Sadness and anger, of course. But the emotion that seemed to rise without warning was an all-pervasive fear—that somehow, somewhere, she’d made a terribly wrong turn.
THE WEEKEND OF Locke and Amanda’s wedding, a United Airlines flight attendant brought Dani an extra hot towel to her seat in first class. The flight from London passed in a haze of mediocre movies and fitful sleep. In Atlanta, she burned a two-hour layover with a venti Starbucks vanilla latte that tasted like heaven but made her body feel like hell. During the final flight to Charleston, pain crept from her hip into her back. It was her own fault, she knew. Airplane seats offered little relief for her joints, and if she veered from doctor’s orders and drank caffeine and dairy, all bets were off.
At first, things weren’t as hard as she’d anticipated. Locke had been kind enough to include her in all the wedding weekend activities: a brunch on Friday morning, the rehearsal Friday night. They’d even asked her to read scripture at the wedding.
“What passage?” Dani had asked when the happy couple had cornered her at the brunch. Amanda looked positively radiant, dressed in a baby-blue strapless dress.
“Surprise us,” Amanda had answered.
Late Friday night, alone in her hotel room, Dani picked up her cell phone and tried Avery. After Locke’s visit to London, they’d been playing a never-ending game of phone tag. The time difference had made catching up nearly impossible, and so Dani had finally decided to drop the bomb in a two-word text message. Locke’s engaged. Avery had called her back immediately. But that was weeks ago. Since then, they’d gone back to their normal routine of missed calls and unreturned messages, and all of Dani’s attempts to add a stop at Fort Bragg to her itinerary had come up empty. The phone rang three times, and then Dani heard Avery’s serious outgoing voicemail message.
“This is First Lieutenant Avery Adams. Please leave a message. If this is an emergency, please call the Fort Bragg . . .”
This is an emergency, Dani seethed as she ended the call. Staring at the BlackBerry in her hand, she dialed a different number—one of the few she remembered by heart.
“Bennett residence,” said a familiar voice, “Wendy speaking.”
“Wendy. It’s Dani.”
“Dani! How are you?” she said. “What time is it there?”
“Well, I’m actually not in London. I’m in South Carolina.”
“South Carolina? Why?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” said Dani. “Do you have a minute? And a Bible? I think I might need some help.”
THE NEXT DAY, the wedding quartet began with Vivaldi at six P.M. sharp. Dani had slept in that morning, then walked the streets of Charleston alone. A technician filed and painted her nails in the afternoon, and once the sun had set into the Atlantic, she emerged from the hotel dressed in a black silk gown that draped gracefully across one shoulder, ready to join a group of guests in a shuttle to the chapel. Dani was grateful that she’d splurged on the thousand-dollar dress, with its modest slit up the left side. There was no price too high for feeling beautiful at the wedding of someone you loved, especially when that person was marrying someone else. A thousand wasn’t too much, Dani decided, especially because she’d saved on the shoes—a pair of simple snakeskin flats with pointed toes. Amanda’s father was a retired army colonel who now served as athletic director at the Citadel, and the crowd of guests looked fit for a royal ball—ladies shimmered in long jewel-lustered gowns; men tugged on their ties, tuxes, and tails. When she crossed the church to ascend the podium for the reading, Dani hoped no one could tell she was wearing flats underneath the designer dress. With her hip in this much pain, she couldn’t have risked wearing heels.
“A reading from the Old Testament.”
The congregation of more than three hundred sat in their seats, silent, a diverse crowd of black and white, military and civilian. They stared up at Dani with expectation as Locke and Amanda stood hand in hand at the altar, waiting. Wendy had helped Dani pick out her selections, the first for fun, the second for sentiment.
“Deuteronomy chapter twenty-four, verse five,” Dani began slowly. “‘If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.’”
When she looked up from the Bible with a smirk, Locke’s groomsmen, many of whom were his football teammates from West Point, began laughing and clapping. One of them shouted hooah. Amanda laughed and shook her head, looking supremely happy that she’d chosen Dani for this job. All of the gathered guests snickered as they realized what she’d read was a joke.
“Now, seriously,” Dani said. “A reading from the New Testament.” She flipped the pages toward the back half of the Bible. “A reading from First John. ‘Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God . . . The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. . . .