Page 37 of Faithless Vows

Something isn’t lining up. If they were this upset with me over what I did last night, they’d be shouting. In my face. Not sitting here in silence.

And Alannah’s mam wouldn’t be here. She’d be with her daughter in our room.

Unless Alannah isn’t there.

The thought sends me to my feet. “Where’s Alannah?” The question comes out strangled.

Before anyone can answer, Siobhán shoves back from the table, her chair scraping sharply across the floor. “Keep my daughter’s name out of your filthy mouth, Ronin Byrne,” she demands, coming straight for me with one shaking finger pointed at my face.

Seamus is out of his chair so fast his knee clips the table, rattling the whiskey glasses. He catches her around the middle before she can reach me and pulls her back, but she keeps her eyes locked on mine, tears streaming down her face. “This is your fault!” she screams, her voice ringing through the small room.

I’ve never heard Siobhán raise her voice in my life. The sound stops me cold.

Seamus murmurs something low, trying to calm her, but she turns on him, beating her fists against his chest. “And yours too! You should’ve taken care of her! She should’ve come first!” She shoves against him until his hold loosens, then pulls free and faces me again. “My daughter is gone,” she says, her voice breaking. “And it’s because of you.”

Gone.

The word doesn’t make sense. Not like this. “What?” I barely get it out. “What the hell do you mean, gone?”

No one answers. Seamus pulls Siobhán into his arms, and this time she doesn’t fight him. A sob breaks from her as she clutches his shirt. My pulse starts hammering, too fast, too loud. This is wrong.

“No.” I shake my head. “She’s in our suite. She’s mad at me, that’s all. I fucked up, and she needed the night to cool off. That’s all this is.” I look to Seamus, then Da and Mam, waiting for one of them to tell me Siobhán is wrong. “She’s in our room,” I insist. “You’re all angry with me for what I did yesterday. I get it. But she has to be there.”

No one tells me I’m right. Mam rises from her chair and crosses the room slowly, stopping beside Da. “Ronin.” Her voice is quiet, and her eyes don’t quite meet mine. “After you left with Kathleen O’Malley…” The name catches in her throat. She swallows, but before she can continue, Da takes over.

“After the embarrassing shit show you caused at your own wedding reception,” he says flatly, “we contained the damage. We didn’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of a room full of people. We finished the reception.”

“And Alannah?” I cut in. I don’t give a damn about the reception. I need to know where the hell my wife is.

“She left,” he says, like it should be obvious.

“What do you mean, she left?”

“I mean she left,” he snaps. “What the hell did you think was going to happen?” He scrubs a hand down his face, then glares at me. “You humiliated her. You shamed her in front of everyone over a woman you had no business touching in the first place. Then you took that same woman by the hand and walked out like a big man, leaving your wife to deal with it alone. And now you’re acting surprised she wasn’t here waiting for you when you finally came strolling in?” He lets out a hard breath and shakes his head. “Christ, Ronin. I don’t know what the fuck happened to you.” He turns away and goes back to his chair. I watch him go, wishing I knew.

“What your father’s trying to say,” Seamus says, looking at me over Siobhán’s head, his arms still wrapped around her as she cries into his chest, “is that after we forced my daughter to sit through the rest of thereception—because you’d disappeared with that woman—she said she needed the washroom.”

He reaches into his pocket and holds out his closed hand. I lift mine without thinking, and he drops something into my palm. I look down.

Alannah’s wedding band.

The sight of it makes me feel sick. The delicate gold band lies in my palm—the ring I slid onto her finger only yesterday.

“When she didn’t come back from the washroom, we searched the hotel,” Seamus continues. “We couldn’t find her anywhere, so we sent Mick to the house. She’d been there long enough to change and pack. Her wedding clothes were left behind. Dress. Veil. Shoes. All of it.”

He looks me dead in the eye. “We stationed Mick outside the honeymoon suite in case she came back. Instead, he found you.”

No. No. This isn’t right.

This was supposed to be our first morning as husband and wife. I was supposed to take her to the airport and finally tell her we were going to Italy. Two weeks, just the two of us. Then we’d come home to the new house and start the life we’d been building toward for years.

I made a mistake. I can admit that. I let my temper get the better of me. I was going to apologize. Tell her the truth about Kathleen. Promise her I’d do better.

I came here expecting tears. A fight. Alannah angry and hurt, but still here. Still waiting for me to make it right.

Instead, I’m standing in my parents’ hotel room with her wedding band in my hand while they tell me my wife is missing.

My knees give out, and I drop back onto the sofa.