Chapter 3

BRAD

The month between the engagement and the wedding was ... weird.

I had told her that I left all decisions to her, that she could consult me if she wished, but she didn’t have to. She consulted me quite a bit. Are you OK with the menu, are the flowers OK, did you have anyone else to invite? Every couple of days, I’d get a call or a text. I’d go over there to talk to her father about the business end of it and she’d ask me questions and make sure I saw Leah. I was actually pleased that she did this. Made me feel like a part of this thing.

A week before the rehearsal dinner, we had a little dinner at my house. We went over some final checks on things, and I showed her the house. We chatted cordially the whole time. Then, she shocked me—asked me to tell her my side of the story with Laura. I was absolutely thunderstruck she did this. But, if she was asking, I’d tell her. I have no idea how much of a difference it made, but she seemed rather contemplative after I’d finished.

Look. I’m not blind to her dilemma. I get it. Believe women. The problem with that is, it’s gotten interpreted as believe all women, which is bullshit. Some women lie. It’s a small number, comparatively, but it’s a number higher than zero. But people see things like “only 5% of women lie!” and ignore that 5% is still a pretty hefty number in absolute terms. Another thing is that that 5% lying is only referring to cases reported to law enforcement. It absolutely does not include accusations only aired to the accuser’s best friends. And, make no mistake about it, the small number of false claims that get as far as a courtroom are far, far more damaging than what I went through. As I told Ingrid, Laura didn’t wreck my life. She tried, but not very well. If she had reported it, she might have had a better shot at wrecking me—but, to report it, she’d probably have to have some evidence. Ingrid and her other friends weren’t asking for evidence.

Anyhow, it’s tricky. I know it is. Laura’s lying about me puts her in a small, small percentage. But she lied. She’s in that small percentage. And the woman that I would be marrying believed the lie. I also wondered if there were statistics showing how often women lied when said women had some serious mental illness going on. And how often the people that believed that lie were somehow oblivious to the mental illness. No, I’m not bitter. Well, maybe a little.

But the big, fat, HUGE problem had gradually revealed itself to me over the past weeks. And, that was this: if this Laura thing wasn’t hanging over my head, I would be very happy to be marrying Ingrid. There was something there. I think she might have even felt it, although she’d never admit it. There was definitely something there.

Which had no chance of actually turning into something solid unless and until she realized Laura had lied. And I had absolutely zero idea of how to make that happen.

The night before the wedding, we had the rehearsal, with the rehearsal dinner following. Steve was there, of course, as was Hannah, the maid-of-honor, who was Ingrid’s best friend from college. We weren’t having a full wedding party, just Steve for me and Hannah for her. Ingrid had obviously told Hannah about the drama, as she was throwing barbs and insults at me most of the night. I just tried to grin and bear it.

Steve decided not to grin and bear it. He went and talked to them. He didn’t tell me he was going to do that; he told me afterwards. He told me what he said, which was pretty fair, and he said that Ingrid didn’t seem upset afterwards. She said nothing to me about it for the rest of the night.

The next day—wedding time. Steve was joking about this being my “first marriage”. He even said at one point—trying to make me feel better—that I could always divorce her after the company was fixed. There was nothing in the agreement that said how long we had to stay married. I could give it a couple of years for the finances to settle and then be on my way. But, there was a problem with divorcing her: that something that was there. I’d rather explore that.

There was another problem: divorcing Ingrid meant losing Leah. No thank you.

So, Steve was trying to cheer me up, but he just made me more depressed. Anyhow, the wedding was at 3:00 pm, the reception from 4 to 10. Steve picked me up and off we went. I was struggling. I was really struggling. I didn’t know how this was going to go. I went off with Steve to take a slug out of the flask he had brought along. I had a gift for Ingrid, that I know she’d want to wear, so I had Steve bring it over. Then, we waited. Impatiently.

Finally, I got up to the front, with the officiant. I waited for Ingrid to be escorted down the aisle by her father. She walked down the aisle, not quite as if she were marching to the gallows, but not particularly happy, either. And then she got to where I was.

And I looked at her.

And then I said the most unexpected, insane, ridiculous thing ever. It just popped out.