My fiancè slept with my sister on our wedding day

The mirror did not lie. Alef Thea Voss stood perfectly still as the makeup artist swept the final brush across her cheekbone, and for one breathless moment, even she had to admit, she looked like a bride. The dress was ivory silk, hand stitched lace climbing up the bodice like a garden growing toward light. Her soft curls had been pinned up delicately, a few spiraling down to frame her face, the natural red in her brown hair catching the morning light streaming through the bridal suite windows. Her blue eyes were bright. Her freckles, lightly dusted over with powder but still there, still her. "Oh my God." Maria, her mother's oldest housekeeper, pressed both hands to her mouth from across the room. Her eyes were already wet. "Alef, sweetheart. You look absolutely beautiful." Alef laughed, that full, unguarded laugh that started in her chest and did not apologize for itself. "Maria, do not you dare cry," she pointed a warning finger. "Because if you cry I will cry and then all of this," she gestured vaguely at her face, "will be completely ruined." "I am not crying," Maria said, crying. The room erupted in soft laughter. Bridesmaids adjusting sashes. A florist rearranging the bouquet for the fourth time. The quiet, beautiful chaos of a wedding morning in full motion. Alef exhaled slowly and looked at herself again. This is it, she thought. This is the day. She waited for the feeling to arrive. The one she had been promised. The butterflies, the certainty, the warm rush of yes, this is exactly right. She smoothed her hands down the silk of her dress and smiled at her reflection and waited. And waited. It will come, she told herself. You are just nervous. "Has anyone seen Jules?" She turned from the mirror, scanning the room. Bridesmaids. Florist. Maria. The hair stylist packing up her kit. But not Jules, her stepsister, her maid of honor, her best friend of six years. "She was here twenty minutes ago," one of the bridesmaids offered. "Getting her lipstick touched up." "She probably went to check on the arrangements downstairs," another said. "You know how she is. She probably wanted everything perfect for you." Alef smiled at that. Yeah. That did sound like Jules. Jules who had spent three weeks obsessing over the centerpiece flowers. Jules who had cried, actual tears, when they found this dress. Jules who had climbed into Alef's bed the night before and said I cannot believe my sister is getting married tomorrow, and held her hand in the dark until they both fell asleep. Of course she is somewhere making sure everything is perfect. Alef shook her head softly and turned back to the mirror. Her phone buzzed. She almost ignored it. The makeup artist was reaching for the setting spray and the florist was trying to hand her the bouquet and someone was asking about the timeline and Her phone buzzed again. She glanced at the screen. Alex. She smiled and picked up. "Alex, I swear to God if you are calling to tell me you lost the rings" "Alef." His voice stopped her cold. Not his teasing voice. Not his I have something ridiculous to tell you voice. This was something else. Something flat and careful in a way Alex never was. Her stomach dropped half an inch. "Please, Alex, not right now." She kept her voice light, turning slightly away from the room. "It is a big day, I am already nervous, and whatever it is can absolutely wait until" "Alef." Quieter this time. "I need you to hear me." The makeup artist stepped back. Something in Alef's posture must have shifted. "What is wrong?" she said quietly. A pause. One second too long. "I cannot find Peter." The bouquet almost slipped from her fingers. "What do you mean you cannot find him?" "I mean I cannot find him." Alex's voice was controlled but she knew him. She had known him her whole life. He was scared. "He told me last night he was heading home. Said he would be there by midnight, we would have a drink, I would stay over, we would all get ready together in the morning. I fell asleep on his couch waiting. When I woke up at six his bed had not been slept in. I have called him fourteen times, Alef. Fourteen." She said nothing. "I drove to his parents' house thinking maybe, I do not know, maybe he got cold feet and went to his mum, but they have not seen him either and now they are starting to panic and I just, I do not know where he is. I do not know what to do." The room around her kept moving. Someone laughed at something. The florist hummed. Completely ordinary sounds that now felt like they were coming from very far away. "Alex." Her voice was remarkably steady. "You are his best man. You are supposed to be with him. The wedding is in forty five minutes." "I know that" "So where is he?" "That is what I am trying to tell you, Alef. I do not know." Silence. She stood very still in the middle of the room in her ivory silk dress with her bouquet in her hand and her curls pinned up and her something borrowed pinned to her bodice and she breathed in slowly through her nose. Think. Where would he go. Where would he And then it came to her. The house. Their house. The one they had found together four months ago, the one they were supposed to move into after the honeymoon. The keys were already hers. Only a handful of people knew the address, her, Peter, her parents. And Jules, who had helped her pick out curtain samples last Tuesday. "I know where he might be," she said. "Alef, the wedding" "I will be back in twenty minutes." She was already moving, reaching for her car keys on the vanity table, silk skirts whispering against the floor. The room erupted immediately. "You cannot leave" "The photographer is arriving in" "Alef, sweetheart, you need to rest, you need to stay calm" "Twenty minutes," she said firmly, already at the door. "I promise. Twenty minutes." She did not wait for an answer. --- The drive took eleven. She did not remember most of it, traffic lights, turns, the city blurring past the windows of her car. She had her dress hiked up to her knees with one hand and both eyes on the road and she kept telling herself there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. He fell asleep there. He went for a walk and lost track of time. He was there right now, wondering where everyone was, phone dead, completely oblivious. Of course that is what it is. Of course. The house came into view. A quiet street. A white front door. His car parked crookedly in the driveway like he had been in a hurry. She exhaled. See. He is here. She pushed the gate open and walked up the path and tried the front door. Unlocked. "Peter?" Her voice echoed into the entryway. The house smelled like his cologne and something else underneath it that she did not examine. No answer. She stepped inside. Crossed the entryway. The living room opened up on her left and she turned toward it automatically and then She stopped. On the floor by the couch. His shoes. His good shoes, the ones she had picked with him for the wedding, dark leather, still with the shine on them. Kicked off haphazardly, like someone had been in a hurry. And beside them. A pair of heels. Strappy. Nude. A small scuff on the left one near the toe. She knew those heels. She had seen those heels that morning, sitting beside a garment bag in the bridal suite. She had seen them. Had even said, Jules you are going to be taller than me in those, I hate you. The air left the room. Or maybe it left her lungs. She was not sure which. Her feet moved before her mind caught up with them, down the hallway, toward the bedroom, toward the door that was not fully closed, that sat half open with a sliver of morning light coming through it, and she pushed it open with one hand and the world stopped. The bouquet hit the floor. Jules. Her Jules, her sister, tangled in sheets that were not hers, in a bed that was not hers, with a man who was supposed to be standing at an altar in forty five minutes waiting for Alef to walk toward him. For a moment nobody moved. Peter's eyes opened first. Found her in the doorway. Went wide. "Alef" She did not hear the rest of it. She turned around. Picked up her bouquet from the floor because some automatic, absurd part of her brain said you will need that. Walked back down the hallway. Back through the living room. Past the shoes. She did not look at the heels. She walked out the front door and stood on the path in the quiet morning in her ivory dress and her carefully pinned curls and she pulled out her phone and she called the wedding planner. "Cancel it," she said. Her voice did not shake. "Cancel everything."