now, you can help by going and getting yourself checked out by a doctor,” Sam told her, undoing the bowtie he had put on under protest for the wedding. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and began to put in a call for backup.
“I don’t need to be checked out,” Zoe maintained stubbornly. “I didn’t hit my head. I found my sister, murdered. I don’t think the doctor’s got any kind of medication to treat that.” She took a breath, struggling to center herself. “I’m sorry about screaming like that before.”
Sam shrugged. “Under the circumstances, it’s understandable.”
“Okay,” she said, moving on. “What can I do to help?”
It was obvious that although she’d always been regarded as the meek sister and as far as he knew, she had always kept pretty much out of the way and in the shadows, Zoe was not about to just fade away until such time as he could get around to questioning her at length.
But he definitely didn’t want her underfoot, either.
“Okay, you want something to do?” he asked her.
She was almost eager as she said, “Yes.”
“Tell everyone out there that due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, the wedding’s been called off—but they can’t leave, because someone has to take down their statements.” He spared her a preoccupied look. “Do you think you can do that for me?”
For as long as she could remember, she’d always hated having to break bad news to anyone, let alone an entire gathering of people who had come expecting to have a good time. But this was something that clearly needed to be done and Sam was asking her to do it. She put her own discomfort aside and nodded.
“Yes, sure, of course. And I’ll tell them how very sorry you are that this happened and they had to be put through this.”
Slowly checking out the victim, aka his bride-to-be, for a second time, albeit more thoroughly, Sam was already preoccupied. Zoe’s words were only half registering as he looked up at her.
Belatedly, he realized what she’d just said. “Oh, yeah, why not?” he said.
“That’s Sam’s way of saying ‘yes,’” Ethan prompted helpfully, giving her an encouraging smile.
Zoe flashed a very small, weak smile at him in response. “Yes, I know.”
Ethan looked after her for a moment as Zoe left the room. “I think they used to call that kind of thing ‘plucky,’” he commented to Sam.
“Yeah, whatever,” Sam muttered, his mind far more preoccupied with the body before him and the murder it so clearly represented.
In all honesty, he hadn’t wanted to marry Celia and had felt almost resentful she had somehow managed to trap him in this arrangement. But he certainly hadn’t wanted to see her dead.
A sliver of guilt accompanied his thoughts before he pushed it—and those thoughts—away.
Sam rose again, knowing that more definitive information would be forthcoming from the medical examiner’s autopsy. He was already impatient to get his hands on it and the ME and his crew hadn’t even arrived yet.
“Definitely the same,” he said under his breath, more to himself than Ethan. “And yet, different.”
Ethan felt he should be there for him, seeing as how Sam had just lost his bride-to-be, but there were times he found it hard to get close to Sam. His younger brother had constructed an entire wall around himself and so far there were no cracks and no passkey.
We all fight our demons in different ways, Ethan thought. And those demons, he knew from experience, all bore their father’s face.
“Well, that makes it as clear as mud,” Ethan told his brother.
Sam laughed shortly, even though there was no humor in the situation. “I know,” he said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
There was sympathy in Ethan’s eyes as he touched his shoulder. When Sam turned toward him, a silent question in his eyes, Ethan said, “In case I don’t get a chance to say it later, I’m sorry.”
His mind going in a dozen directions at once, Sam asked, “About what?”
Confused by his brother’s response, Ethan gestured toward the body on the floor. “About your fiancée,” he said pointedly.
“Oh.”
For a second, he’d forgotten. This was a homicide and he was thinking like a homicide detective. Personal thoughts weren’t allowed to enter into that. He’d trained himself that way.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Sam shot out the words one at a time in staccato fashion, leaving his brother to wonder exactly what had gone on between Sam and the woman he could no longer marry.
Was Sam that good at hiding his grief, or had what had happened to all of them so long ago destroyed Sam’s ability to feel anything at all, not even sorrow, much less love?
Ethan was almost afraid to find out the answer.
When she opened the door leading into the church where the actual wedding ceremony was supposed to be taking place, someone automatically cued the organist. Strains of “Here Comes the Bride” began to swell throughout the church and everyone sitting in the pews automatically rose to their feet and faced the back of the church.
Half a beat later, as Zoe continued to stand there, all but frozen in place, someone from within the crowd declared in disappointment, “Hey, that’s not the bride, that’s Zoe.”
The observation was immediately followed by a myriad of questions, all fired at once at Zoe who, since she wasn’t the missing bride, was expected to satisfactorily field the various inquiries.
“Where’s Celia?”
“What’s going on?”
“How long does it take for that woman to get ready? Let’s get this show on the road already.”
There were more questions and more irritated complaints, but those were entirely indistinguishable to Zoe. Shouted out, they mingled with one another until everything just became one huge, pulsating cacophony of noise.
Standing there, with one of the double doors closed at her back in order to afford her support—her knees still felt incredibly weak and she worried about them buckling—Zoe cleared her throat and tried, at first in vain, to get everyone’s attention.
Because her voice was initially so whisper soft, no one even heard her make the attempt except for a couple of the wedding guests who were closest to her at the rear of the church.
But others saw her lips moving and assumed she was telling them something.
“What?”
“Speak up!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“What the hell is going on here?” someone from the center of the crowd roared angrily, their voice louder than the rest.
It was the last disembodied question that caused Zoe to stiffen in response. Angry now, as well as incredibly upset and shaken, she raised her voice as she made a second attempt to be heard.
“There’s not going to be a wedding,” she began. Her voice was still somewhat shaky, but at least it was finally becoming audible.
“I drove all that way for nothin’?” an indignant woman cried angrily in response.
“What do you mean, there’s not going to be a wedding?” someone else demanded heatedly.
“Why the hell not?” yet another, deep male voice wanted to know.
As