Chapter 4: The Drive Home
The interior of Clara’s sedan smelled of expensive leather and leftover takeout from the rehearsal dinner. Driving in a wedding dress was an exercise in absurdity; the yards of white lace and tulle bunched up around her waist, catching on the gear shift and restricting her breathing. She kept her eyes fixed on the asphalt of the interstate, the late afternoon sun casting long, golden shadows across the dashboard. Her phone buzzed relentlessly in the passenger seat, lighting up with missed calls from her mother, her maid of honor, and three different wedding vendors demanding to know who was going to pay the remaining balance. She switched the phone to silent and tossed it into the glove compartment, plunging the car into a heavy, restorative quiet.
When she pulled into the driveway of the suburban home she and Julian had rented together, the driveway was empty. Julian’s matte-black pickup truck was gone.
Clara turned off the ignition and sat in the quiet garage for several minutes, listening to the ticking of the cooling engine. Stepping out of the car, she gathered the voluminous skirts of her dress in her arms and walked up the front steps. The key turned smoothly in the lock. Inside, the house felt entirely different than it had that morning. The nervous energy, the garment bags, the scattered checklists, the rented champagne flutes—all of it was gone, replaced by an eerie, lived-in stillness.
May you like
She walked into the living room. On the coffee table sat a small, framed photograph of Julian and Lily taken at a national park six months prior. Julian was smiling, his arm around his daughter’s shoulders as they stood before a massive pine tree. Lily was laughing, holding a pinecone up to the camera lens. Clara had often looked at that photograph and felt like an outsider looking in, an intruder in a pre-existing family dynamic that she had tried to bend to her own aesthetic standards. She had wanted the ready-made family without the messy, unscripted reality of actual parenthood.
Heading down the short hallway toward the master bedroom, she noticed that Julian’s closet doors were open. The hangers were empty. The dresser drawers stood agape, showing bare wood. He hadn't just left the venue; he had packed up his life and Lily’s while she was still standing in the chapel in her ruined dress. A sharp pain gripped her chest, not from heartbreak, but from the sudden, undeniable weight of her own selfishness. She walked into the kitchen, the marble countertops gleaming under the pendant lights, and saw a single piece of lined notebook paper sitting beside the coffee maker. Written in Julian’s neat, all-caps military handwriting were two simple sentences: We are staying at the barracks guest quarters for the week. Do not follow us.
