"You don't have to do anything for the rest of the day," Grace told me when I came downstairs.
"I want to go to the venue," I said.
She frowned. "Why?"
"Rachel says my father's photograph and the letters for the memory table are still in storage. I want them back. I don't want to ask somebody else to handle them, and I don't want the things that mattered to me left there because I'm afraid of the room."
Caleb offered to drive. Grace said she would come too, but I asked her to stay with Mom. I knew she wanted to protect me from the sight of an empty wedding venue, and perhaps she was right. But the work of ending something sometimes requires seeing what is no longer going to happen. I didn't want the conservatory to remain in my imagination as a place where everybody was still waiting for me.
We reached Arbor Ridge shortly before two. The driveway curved through a line of old maples toward a low glass building, and the spring flowers we had chosen for the terrace were blooming exactly on schedule. Rachel met us at a side entrance, wearing ordinary work clothes instead of the black suit she would have worn for the ceremony. She apologized once and then turned to the small storage room where our boxes were stacked. There were programs, framed photographs, candles, and two signs with our names in elegant white lettering.
The sight of the signs stopped me. They looked cheerful, confident, and expensive. For months I had imagined them greeting the guests as everyone arrived. Now they were pieces of painted wood carrying names that no longer belonged together in the way we had intended. Rachel asked whether I wanted the venue to dispose of them. I told her yes, but I kept the framed photograph of my father and the handwritten note my mother had planned to place beside it.
We walked through the main hall on the way out. It was empty except for stacked chairs and a cleaning cart near the doors. The light came through the glass roof in broad, quiet rectangles that fell across the polished floor. Nothing dramatic happened. There was no music, no abandoned bouquet, no tearful group of guests staring at an aisle without a bride or groom. Just a beautiful room doing exactly what it was built to do, waiting for the next people who would rent it.
I stood still for a minute. Caleb stayed beside the doors and let me have the space. I tried to picture myself there at four-thirty, nervous and excited, watching Lauren approach in the dress she had chosen. The image came easily because I had imagined it so many times. What I could no longer imagine was the moment after the vows, when we would look at each other and believe every word we had said.
"Ready?" Caleb asked.