back and forth so that people wouldn’t have to worry about drinking. And she had her own apartment to worry about. She’d given notice, and now it was just a matter of boxing up her possessions, mainly books, and figuring out what to do with her few pieces of furniture, most of which were not coming with her to Bruce’s place. And she was worried about Zoe, who still lived in Boxgrove, because she’d just had another massive fight with her boyfriend of seven years, and now she didn’t want him at the wedding. Zoe was a rock—well, she was Abigail’s rock—but when things went bad with Dan, all bets were off.
With the wedding looming, these were Abigail’s biggest worries, and she realized that she was in pretty good shape, considering. The memory of the stranger at the vineyard in California now felt like a fuzzy, unreal dream, something that had happened to her either very long ago or maybe not at all. In some ways, it had even helped clarify for her how much she wanted to marry Bruce. The fact that the evening had been intriguing and romantic made her only crave the solidness, and coziness, of marriage more. Everything was going to be all right.
And then she saw Scottie in the coffee shop.
That whole day she felt like a chasm had opened up in front of her, a big black hole she was powerless to escape. He’d come for her—all the way across the country—and he was going to wreck her life. In a way, it helped that she later got the email; it gave her a chance to answer him, to try to end it before it got any worse. She did feel temporarily better after sending him her response, but that night she was anxious, her mind filling with images from California, a jittery sensation racing across her skin. Just to make it stop, to try to relax her body, she flipped onto her stomach and masturbated, feeling half aroused and half sickened by the thoughts that kept entering her mind. She made herself come, and afterward, exhausted, hollowed out, she at least felt that maybe she’d be able to get some sleep.
But there was still that chasm, black and bottomless, that she couldn’t entirely shake out of her mind.
CHAPTER 9
Her few married friends had all told her that their weddings had been a blur, that you never got a chance to eat, let alone enjoy, any of the food, and you’d be lucky to get a moment alone with your spouse. Most of that turned out to be true for Abigail on her wedding day, but she still enjoyed herself.
The ceremony, held in the upper loft of the barn, was fairy-tale-like, the entire place lit by white candles. She thought she’d be nervous—thinking back on her few high school experiences on the stage—but she was okay, more emotional than she thought she’d be, cognizant of the enormity of the moment, of what it meant to pledge yourself to one person for the rest of your life. She felt great in her wedding dress. She’d never been a girl who dreamed of wearing the perfect white dress for her wedding, and she’d considered wearing black just to be different, but then she’d found an online site that sold vintage wedding dresses and fallen in love with a butter-toned organza dress from the 1940s. It was simple—a sleeveless bodice and an A-line skirt—but was covered in beads and sequins. It was long enough that it covered her single tattoo, a barren tree that ran from her hip halfway down her left thigh. When she’d seen herself in the dress with her makeup and her hair done (she’d given the hairdresser pictures of Audrey Hepburn from Roman Holiday), she’d felt as though she was looking at a stranger, that she was a fictional character, an impostor. She told herself it was a natural feeling, something every bride must feel, but she wasn’t sure. The feeling of disassociation had something to do with what had happened in California—Scottie, thank God, had not replied to her email—but it also had something to do with Bruce. Who was this rich, attentive man? And who was she, that she was marrying him? It wasn’t just that he was a stranger, it was that she sometimes felt like a stranger to herself as well. Like everything she was now doing to prepare for this wedding was happening automatically. She was going through