PART 4
I did not confront Adrian at the altar. I want to be clear about that, because the movie version has me standing up during the vows. Real justice is quieter and far more devastating.
I let the wedding proceed.
I let Adrian marry his bride — a young woman named Vanessa, who I’d learn came from significant money, which explained a great deal about why a man would fake his death to escape a florist and reappear at a richer altar.
I let him have his perfect day, his flowers, his “I do.”
And then, as the reception was getting started, as Adrian was laughing with a champagne glass in his hand at the wedding of a dead man, the doors opened.
Not for me. I was still just the florist, packing up my things in the corner, watching.
For the investigators.
Insurance fraud investigators move fast when you hand them a living corpse at his own second wedding. They’d confirmed enough in a few hours — the open claim, my report, the death certificate, the very-alive groom — to arrive before the cake was cut.
The room went silent the way rooms do. Adrian’s champagne glass stopped halfway to his mouth. Colleen — who’d wept at her son’s grave — went white. Vanessa, the bride, looked around in confusion at a wedding that was very suddenly not about her.
And Adrian’s eyes swept the room in panic and landed, finally, on the florist in the corner.
