Chapter 4: The Moment the Music Stopped text
I did not receive a live feed from the church. I did not need one. The first message arrived at 2:24 p.m. from a cousin who had always maintained careful neutrality in family conflicts. It contained no greeting and only one sentence: “Sienna opened a black box at the altar. Everything stopped.” A second message followed three minutes later from an old colleague who had been invited because of his remaining ties to Vance Crest Holdings. He wrote that the maid of honor had tried to take the box away, that Sienna had insisted on opening it herself, and that the expression on Arthur’s face when the first document came out was the expression of a man watching a controlled demolition begin on the exact ground where he was standing.
I set the phone face down and finished the coffee. The delivery confirmation still glowed on the laptop screen. Somewhere across the city the ceremony that had been designed to exclude me was now rearranging itself around the contents of a box I had packed in silence. I felt no urge to drive to St. Jude’s. Presence would have turned the moment into a confrontation about my motives. Absence kept the focus exactly where it belonged: on the marriage certificate, the flash drive, and the folder marked “Play Me.”
