Chapter 5 - Not Today, Ava
Everything after moved too fast.
He grabbed for the phone.
She ran.
He caught her near the staircase, twisting her bandaged hand from a cut she had gotten that morning while helping with decorations.
She screamed.
He covered her mouth for one second.
Not long.
Long enough.
Ava bit his finger.
He cursed.
She tore away and hit him with the small silver tray from the gift table because it was the only object within reach.
The tray struck his face.
He fell against the banister and hit his head on the edge of the newel post.
Blood appeared at his hairline.
Ava ran.
She did not run to Diane.
She tried first.
Diane was in the bedroom, half dressed for the ceremony, crying because Wade had stumbled in bleeding and shouting that Ava attacked him.
Ava held up her phone.
“Mom, please look.”
Diane turned on her.
“Not now.”
“Mom—”
“Not today, Ava.”
“He grabbed me!”
“He is bleeding!”
“He tried to take my phone!”
Diane’s face crumpled.
“Why can’t you let me have one good thing?”
That was when Ava stopped speaking.
Not forever.
Just to her mother.
She hid the folder on her phone behind a calculator app David had once installed for privacy after warning her that teenage group chats were not the only place digital safety mattered.
Then she survived the ceremony.
Yes.
The wedding still happened.
That was the part outsiders later found unbelievable.
But families in denial can step over a bleeding truth if someone has already paid for flowers.
Wade changed shirts.
His head was bandaged.
His black eye darkened.
Diane cried through the vows.
Ava stood in the back row with her injured hand wrapped, holding her phone in her left hand and staring at the open church doors.
Waiting for David.
He arrived too late for the vows.
Not too late for the truth.
Now, in the living room after the wedding, David looked at Diane and understood the shape of her mistake.
She had not believed Wade entirely.
That would have been simpler.
She had chosen not to know.
There is a difference.
A terrible one.
Diane stepped toward Ava.
“Ava, I’m sorry.”
Ava backed away.
Diane stopped as if she had hit glass.
David looked at her.
“Don’t ask her to comfort you.”
Diane nodded, crying harder.
“I know.”
Wade laughed bitterly.
“Oh, wonderful. The soldier is giving emotional orders now.”
David turned.
“No. Legal ones come next.”
Wade’s father sat back down slowly.
His face had gone pale enough that one of the relatives beside him asked if he needed water.
He shook his head.
David pointed toward the sofa.
“You. Harold. Start talking.”
Harold looked at Wade.
Wade’s expression promised destruction.
But Harold was already destroyed.
He looked at Ava again.
“Maren’s daughter had a phone too,” he said.
Wade shot up from the chair.
David stepped once.
Wade sat back down.
Harold continued.
“She took pictures of loan papers. Wade said she was stealing bank information. Said she hit him with a lamp when he tried to retrieve them.”
Ava’s voice was barely audible.
“Did she?”
Harold closed his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
David said, “That means no.”
Harold nodded slowly.
“No. I don’t think she did. Not like he said.”
Wade sneered.
“You pathetic old man.”
Harold flinched, then kept going.
“Maren sold her house later. The money went into a joint business account. Wade said it failed because of the market.”
Diane whispered, “What happened to Maren?”
Harold stared at the floor.
“She left him. Eventually.”
“And her daughter?”
“I don’t know.”
Ava’s face tightened.
“You don’t know?”
Harold looked ashamed.
“I did not ask.”
The room absorbed that.
Did not ask.
May you like
The sentence sounded small.
It was monstrous.
