'Til Death Do Us Part by Kate White

I’d been assigned to, was at the end of a long hallway on the second floor and was about three times the size of my living room. It had a huge four-poster bed with a little step stool beside it and was decorated in florals and yellow and white stripes. Peyton, I realized, must have believed that yellow was a color that flattered and soothed everyone. Unfortunately, nothing was going to soothe me tonight.
    Seeing I was without bags, Clara asked if I needed anything and promised to find me a toothbrush. After she was gone I dug my cell phone out of my purse and called Jack. There was no answer at his college office, his apartment, or his cell phone. I left messages for him to call me as soon as he could.
    After splashing some water on my face in the adjoining bathroom, I found my way to the library using the directions Clara had provided. It was painted a deep, mossy green, not only the walls, but the bookshelves, though they had been treated some way that made them look like leather. There were several nubby green sofas, and the floors were covered in a soft green-and-beige-checked wall-to-wall carpeting. Accenting the room were antique Chinese pieces, including a red-lacquer chest used as a coffee table and a red desk painted with willows and pagodas.
    I helped myself to the French white wine being chilled in a bucket on the coffee table. The phone on the end table by the couch rang often but was immediately intercepted by someone in another room.
    I took a large swig of wine, though I could tell that alcohol wasn’t going to be able to take the edge off. Just as I was about to flop down on one of the sofas, I caught sight of a row of photos lining the mantel and walked over to inspect them. Though there were some shots of family members, most were of Peyton and David leading the good life—on sailboats and terraces and in the kinds of outdoor cafés they had only in France and Italy. One especially large photo was of them on their wedding day. It was a formal pose from the waist up—Peyton in that fantastic crumb-catcher bodice, David in his tux with a simple white rose boutonniere. They looked triumphant.
    Sinking into the couch, I opened the composition book that I had brought down with me. What I was anxious to do right now, before things got any crazier, was to make a time line of Peyton’s wedding. Robin had asked Ashley if she had noticed anything strange at the wedding, and it was time for me to dredge the recesses of my memory.
    The weekend had kicked off with a bridesmaids’ luncheon, held on Friday afternoon—and it was actually the first time that several of us had met one another. Robin, Ashley, and Prudence were all childhood friends of Peyton’s. I hadn’t met any of them before, nor had Jamie. Maverick, Peyton’s PR person, had seemed familiar with Robin, but I wasn’t sure if she’d known the others. Bridesmaids who were strangers was a fairly typical situation, but in other weddings I’d been in, you at least got to know the rest of the wedding party in the weeks before the big day—either while planning a shower or hosting a bachelorette party.
    But Peyton had wanted neither. As for the girls’ night on the town, she’d declared that she was now a public figure and didn’t want anyone snapping a picture of her coming out of a place where men—in her words—“stripped to G-straps and let women stuff ten-dollar bills next to their cocks.” She didn’t bother explaining her veto of the shower, but it was easy enough to interpret. Peyton had very particular taste and was marrying a ton of money. The last thing she needed was a backflow of blenders and a bunch of ugly place mats.
    I couldn’t recall anything out of the ordinary about the bridesmaids’ luncheon—other than how subdued it was. And it wasn’t simply because some of us were strangers. By then Peyton’s Bridezilla side was full-blown, and each one of us was trying to keep her meltdowns to a minimum.
    The rehearsal dinner,