Page 37 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

I fall back another step. “So you’re going to blame all this on hormones? On me?” Though I’m burning with rage my voice is frigid. My heart is a hammer.

“No, of course not. I’m just trying to explain what I think happened. Why I was so emotional and not thinking straight. How I could panic and run from marrying someone I loved so much and then could never see my way back.” She drops her eyes. “And when I wanted to reach out it was too late. He was marrying someone else. Having children of his own. I...”

Children who were more important than me.“How could it ever be too late to tell my father that I existed? How could you lie to me my entire life?”

In that former life, the one that has just been blown to smithereens, the tortured expression on my mother’s face, her tears, her terror would have made me want to comfort her.

But at this moment it’s all about me.

She puts her hand on my arm and I pull away.

“I’m sorry I’ve missed all these years,” my father says. “Genuinely sorry.”

I blink away my tears and look at him. At his strong, even features, at the whiskey-colored eyes that I inherited from him and have been staring at in the mirror all these years.

I have his nose, too, slightly too long and maybe a smidge too thin. The same wave that’s in his hair.

He pulls out a picture of his mother around the age I am now and it’s like looking at myself in the mirror. My mother is tall and lean and dark haired so I always assumed, and was glad, that I looked like her.

I feel like a kidnap victim who’s been brainwashed to identify with their kidnapper, one of those people grabbed and locked up who comes to accept what is a travesty as normal and who is suddenly reunited with her real family and doesn’t know how to behave.

“Lauren.” My mother’s voice breaks. Her face is red and mottled. Her eyes are twin pools of guilt and sorrow and I’m viciously glad that she’s in pain. “His wife... she... she wasn’t well.”

“What does that have to do with me? Withtellingme?”

“Lauren.” Bree’s voice takes me by surprise. I’ve been so focused on the appearance of a father I never knew existed that I forgot she was here. “This is so... huge. Maybe you should all sit down together and, I don’t know, figure out a way to talk through this and work it out.”

“Work it out?” I turn on her. “Talk it out?” In this moment it’s the very last thing I’d ever consider. “What planet are you living on?”

Every instinct I have clamors for me to get out of there and as far away as possible.I need a cave. A place to lick my wounds and come to terms with my altered reality. I have a father!

I turn to flee but my shoe gets caught in THE DRESS. “If you really want to help, get me out of here and out of this dress!” Even I can hear the panic in my voice as I shriek at Bree.

I half expect her to argue, in which case I’m going to kick and rip myself free and the hell with THE DRESS. The thought is viciously appealing. Because really, given all the untruths now coming to light maybe this dress isn’t anything special at all. Maybe it’s just a dress that my mother has made up stories about. My brain is already off and running when Bree takes my arm and helps me move off the fabric then steps around me to gather up the train. My mother is still frozen in place when I grab the train out of Bree’s hands and prepare to make a break for the bedroom.

“Lauren, please,” myfather—it almost hurts to even think the word—says. “I’m sorry everything spilled out this way. I truly regret taking you by surprise. I just couldn’t wait any longer to know you. And I didn’t realize a day would make that big a difference.” Or maybe he was afraid my mother would find a way not to tell me at all. “Please. Stay, like your friend said, so that we can figure this out.” He takes a step closer. “I know you’re upset and rightfully so. But let’s at least get acquainted. Start getting to know each other. We have a lot of lost years to make up for.”

Blood whooshes in my ears. It’s all I can hear. That and the frantic pounding of my heart. I swallow and prepare to turn. Before I can move, the front door opens. My head jerks up. Spencer and Clay walk in.

“Don’t look!” The words are automatic. I cover myself as if I’m naked and not just wearing a wedding dress he’s not supposed to see. In truth I might as well be naked given how torn apart and exposed I feel.

“What’s going on?” Spencer strides to my side. “Are you okay?”

I look at my father, who doesn’t seem to know what to do next, then at my mother, who’s still standing there, mute. Even Bree is slack-jawed, unsure what’s supposed to happen.

“No. I’m not okay. I need to get out of this dress. I don’t care if I ever see it again. And I want to go home.” I hear how childish the words sound and I don’t care about that, either. Ifeellike a child, bereft and powerless. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to dissolve into tears. Or throw myself on the ground, kicking and screaming in the kind of tantrum I, as the only child of a struggling single mother, was too aware of the load she carried to throw.

“But what happened?” He looks around again as if searching for a weapon or some other threat.

“Bottom line? This man”—I point to Jake Warner—“is my father. The father my mother told me died before I was born, when in truth she jilted him at the altar and never told him that I existed.” I wait for this soap opera plot that is my new reality to sink in before I continue. “The person I have loved and trusted my entire life—the person who taught me to never tell a lie—has been lying to me and everybody else for forty years.”

His eyes are wide but he doesn’t waste time asking for more detail. He takes my elbow and says, “Right, then. Let’s get you out of that dress.”

I could cry with gratitude. If I weren’t already in love with him I would be now.

“Lauren, honey...” My mother steps toward us.

“No.” I clutch Spencer’s arm as I face her. “I’m taking off this dress and I’m leaving. I can’t talk to you right now. I can’t even look at you.”

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