The Unwedding by Ally Condie

Author:Ally Condie [CONDIE, ALLY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

32.

It’s Ben when he was a baby,” Rachel said briskly. “Olivia had them made for everyone to wear as a joke for when they left on their honeymoon.” She jerked her head toward the boxes on the floor. “Help yourself. Take some back over to the memorial for the guys.”

“Um, okay,” Trevor said, but he made no move to do so. He seemed to settle, almost compress, deeper into the armchair, now that he knew what he was seeing. Baby Ben, before any of them (except maybe Andy?) had known him. Baby Ben, who was going to die when he was far too young.

“Okay,” Ellery said. “If you’re all thinking Ben might not have sent the text, then the question of who saw him last matters even more.”

“Are you, like, an undercover detective or something?” Trevor asked Ellery.

“No.”

He didn’t look convinced. “You did find Ben’s body. Maybe you had a tip? Someone told you where to look? Or that something was about to go down?” Their moment of understanding was gone. “Why else would you be staying at a resort like this by yourself? Are you holding out on us?” He leaned forward, glancing around wildly. “Are we in the middle of something that’s bigger than we can even imagine?”

“Yes, in the sense that people are dying,” Ellery said. “But I’m not a detective. I’m a high school teacher. I’m here alone because my husband and I just got divorced and we’d already paid for the trip.”

“Well, hell.” Trevor leaned back. “At least he isn’t dead.”

“There is that,” Ellery agreed. “Can you walk me through the wedding schedule? You all know it, but I don’t.”

Rachel reached into her bag and handed Ellery a gold-edged card with a gilded drawing of a flower printed at the top. Ellery felt herself flush a bit as she read the first formal gathering on the list, for Friday night. Cocktails and Hors d’Oeuvres at the Gallery at Broken Point. The event she and Ravi had crashed, thinking it was daring and funny, with no idea of what lay ahead.

The next item on the schedule was Rehearsal Brunch at the Slipstream Bar. Ellery had seen pictures of the bar online. It was the repurposed Airstream trailer that had been restored to mint condition and tucked into the trees down on the other side of the hill from the ocean. In the photos, globe lights on strings looped from redwood to redwood, blooming against the soft greens and rusts and silvers of the trees, the foliage, the ground, the trailer. Groupings of redwood picnic tables—their planks smooth and soft in the filtered light—and Adirondack chairs, gathered around lower, circular tables, filled the clearing around the bar.

“And Ben was at the brunch,” Ellery said, confirming.

“Yup,” Trevor said. “We all did toasts and everything.” He glanced over at Andy, who had missed the brunch. Ben had been a very understanding friend, she thought. To let one of his groomsmen do whatever he wanted on the day of the wedding until the ceremony seemed unusual.

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