Saskia was unrecognizable as she walked down the aisle. When we were kids she’d had this crazy electrocuted hair and now it was all smoothed down and folded into petals that splayed out like a peony and made her face seem very small. I wasn’t sure if she was nervous or angry at me, but she only glanced over once and her expression did not change. I hadn’t seen her in thirteen years. I suspect she chose me as maid of honor so she didn’t have to pick a favorite among her real friends.

When it was over and the best man and I had walked back down the aisle, I saw William, not in the back but close to the front, on the groom’s side, as if he were family. He was whispering with two aunties on either side of him. He was wearing a vintage white tux, absurdly overdressed for this afternoon wedding, but the cut was perfect and he so beautiful in it with his sheepish glance at me. He must have seen the invitation at my apartment in Cambridge before I’d left.

“Fuck him,” I said.

“Another lovely touch, No Show,” the best man said and detached my arm from his as soon as we reached the church doors. Caledonia had turned the whole wedding party against me.

As much as I wanted elegant William on my arm at the reception where everyone hated me, I told him to leave.

He brushed the back of his hand slowly up the side of my neck to my earlobe. “Let me just have a few hours with you.”

“Please go.” It was really hard to say these words.

A few of the other maids were watching but turned away when I came back across the parking lot. We got into limos that took us to a country club where we posed for photos on the golf course as the sun dropped, the light flat and orange across our faces, the way photographers like it. The entire wedding party minus me had gone to the same small college in Upstate New York. Saskia and Bo had met at freshman orientation. All the toasts contained words like “foretold” and “fate” and “meant to be.” The women at least varied in height, weight, and hair color, but the men were enormous and indistinguishable, varsity oarsmen. Every time one stood up in the same suit to say the same thing the last one had said, I put him in a bloodred kimono or a lemon yellow wrap.