There is a particular silence that falls over a bridal suite when something is missing. It is the silence of six people realizing that one of them should have been watching it.
“Okay,” I said. “Nobody panic. Panic is just running without a timeline.”
I stepped into the suite and closed the door. Corinne sat at the vanity. Kiki stood by the window, still holding the tissue paper like a bird she had failed to save.
The other four bridesmaids were arranged around the room in dusty blue dresses, frozen mid-task. One of them held a curling iron that was slowly producing smoke. They had been friends since college, all of them now between twenty-eight and thirty-one, and none of them had ever lost anything together before.
“June,” I said, “unplug that.”
June unplugged it.
“When did anyone last see the box?”
“Two-fifteen,” said Bethany. She was thirty, an actuary, and spoke in decimals.
“Two-fifteen and forty seconds. I took a photo of Corinne’s bouquet. The box is in the background.”
She held up her phone. In the foreground was the bouquet: white ranunculus, pale green hellebores, and one bright sprig of something Corinne called “the brave green.” Behind it was a large white box on the chair by the window.
On the lid, in Corinne’s neat block capitals, was a label. CHAMPAGNE — 6.
“Corinne labels everything,” Kiki said.
“Corinne’s shoes are champagne satin,” Corinne said. “There are six pairs. The label is accurate. Corinne stands by the label.”
“It’s a good label,” I said. “Who’s been in this room since two-fifteen?”
Everyone thought about it.
“The photographer,” said Roz.
“The florist’s assistant,” said Nadia.
“Desmond’s aunt, looking for a bathroom,” said June. “Twice.”
“A guy with a hand truck,” said Bethany. “Collecting boxes. I assumed he was supposed to be collecting boxes. He had the energy of a man who was supposed to be collecting boxes.”
I wrote all of this down. Then I opened the door and shouted for Ollie.
Ollie arrived in four seconds, headset on, granola bar in hand.
“The bridal party’s shoe box is missing,” I said. “Large, white, labeled champagne. Search the building. Every room, every closet, every car in the lot.”
“Copy.” He paused. “Should I tell people why?”
“Tell them it’s a box of champagne. People look harder for champagne.”
“Copy.”
He vanished.
Through the window, I watched him jog across the gravel lot, stopping to look under a Buick. Beyond him, a white catering van with a cartoon lobster on the side was pulling out onto the road. I noted it the way you note a cloud. I had bigger things to deal with.
The bigger thing walked in without knocking. It was holding a binder.
“I heard,” Lorraine said.
“Of course you did.”
“Ollie told the groomsmen we lost the champagne. Desmond’s best man is in the kitchen weeping.” She set the binder on the vanity with a thud. “What do we know?”
I told her. She listened without interrupting, which was a first. Then she opened the binder to a tab I had never seen. It was labeled MEASUREMENTS.
“Every member of this wedding party,” Lorraine said, “and their shoe size. I collected them in February. For emergencies.”
“You collected shoe sizes. In February.”
“Paper,” she said, “doesn’t crash.”
I looked at the page. Six names, six sizes, in Lorraine’s fierce handwriting.
Corinne: 7.5. Kiki: 7.5. Bethany: 7.5. June: 7.5. Roz: 8. Nadia: 7.
Something warm and dangerous moved in my chest. It was the feeling of a column about to become useful.
The search party reported back at 3:09.
Ollie had found a box of champagne in the kitchen. It was champagne. Felix had found a box in the coat closet. It contained forty years of lost umbrellas, and he took the opportunity to remind everyone that the floors were 1911.
“The floors,” he said, standing in the doorway of the suite, “are 1911. If this becomes a running situation, I need to know about it. People running in heels on that oak is how you get a lawsuit and a gouge.”
“Nobody is running, Felix.”
“I heard running.”
“That was Ollie. He’s in sneakers.”
Felix looked down at Ollie’s sneakers with deep suspicion, as though sneakers might be a trick.
“Rubber soles,” Ollie offered. “Very gentle. Like a librarian.”
“I’ve met librarians,” said Felix, and left.
Then came the suggestions. They came fast, from all directions, and none of them were good.
Desmond texted from the library offering the groomsmen’s dress shoes. The smallest pair was a men’s eleven. Kiki suggested sneakers for everybody, “like a fun, quirky choice.” Lorraine looked at her for so long that Kiki apologized to the carpet.
June suggested a store. Bethany pulled it up. The nearest bridal shop was forty-one minutes away and closed at three on Saturdays. The nearest anything was a hardware store that sold work boots.
“Corinne,” said Corinne, “will not be married in work boots.”
“Nobody’s getting married in work boots,” I said.
“Corinne is just putting it on the record.”
Lorraine wrote something in the binder. I leaned over to look. It said WORK BOOTS, and under it, firmly underlined, NO.
“For the record,” she said.
I stood in the middle of the room and did the math. Six women. Fifty-one minutes. One very specific color scheme, and one man downstairs who would personally fight anybody whose heels weren’t capped.
Then I said the thing I had been trying not to say.
“I have shoes.”
The Trunk Library came up the stairs in three trips. Ollie and I stacked the eleven clear boxes on the bed. The bridesmaids gathered around them the way people gather around a campfire, if a campfire were sorted by ID.
“Why,” said Roz slowly, “do you have eleven pairs of shoes in your car?”
“It’s an emergency rotation.”
“For what emergency?”
I gestured at the room.
Kiki picked up a box. “W-162? What’s W-162?”
“Those are what I’m wearing. That’s the box they came out of.”
I took it from her gently. “Don’t mix the boxes. The boxes matter.”
The problem was obvious within a minute. Everything in the trunk was neutral: black, brown, Oat 3, one gray, and the ducks.
The bridesmaids wore dusty blue. Corinne wore ivory. Lorraine stood over the bed with the face of a woman watching her daughter’s wedding photos turn beige.
“These are lovely,” she said, in a voice that meant the opposite. “For a funeral.”
“They’re for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency. These are a second emergency.”
She wasn’t wrong. I opened my laptop on the vanity, next to Corinne’s lipstick. I opened the spreadsheet. Corinne turned her head very slightly to watch.
“Corinne tests software for a living,” she said. “Corinne has never seen anyone filter in anger.”
I filtered column B for seven and a half. Then I filtered column C for the blues: Dusk 1, Dusk 2, and Harbor. Then I filtered column H for heel caps, because I could feel Felix through the floor.
Four pairs. Four dusty blue pairs, in size seven and a half, capped and rated four or higher.
“That’s Kiki, Bethany, and June,” I said. “Plus one spare.”
“What about Roz?” said Lorraine. “What about Nadia?”
I cleared the filter and typed again. Column B, not equal to seven and a half.
The four mistakes of hope came up. Two in size eight. Two in size seven. One of each, I remembered, was a soft gray-blue I had bought because I was in denial.
“I have them,” I said. “I have all of them.”
Lorraine looked at the screen. Then she looked at me. “And Corinne?”
I filtered for ivory. W-088. Pearl 1, forty millimeters, comfort five, column F: “Bought for Grandma’s ninetieth. Danced in them.”
“They’re all at my apartment,” I said. “Nineteen minutes away.”
“Then go,” said Lorraine. “Go now.”
Ollie stepped forward. “Copy. Should I drive?”
“You hold the building. Keep Felix off the guests and Lorraine off Felix.”
“Copy.” He handed me a granola bar without being asked. It was oat and honey. It was, I realized, roughly Oat 3.
“I’ll call ahead. My sister is there. She can pull them and meet me at the door.”
I dialed Dee. She picked up on the first ring, slightly out of breath, the way people sound when they have been lifting something heavy.
“Tess! Good timing,” she said. “I was just about to text you. Don’t be mad.”
Behind her I could hear a noise I knew very well. It was the sound of a roll of packing tape being pulled very fast.
“Dee,” I said. “Where are the shoes?”
There was a pause. “So I’m just saying,” said my sister, “Harriet works a lot faster than the pamphlet suggested.”
Up next: Column F
Continue to Part 3 →