Page 21 of Broken Vows

But when Theo stepped into my office, the cave opened. Everything in me burst out and the monster I’ve been suppressing wants out.

“So, I need to tell you something…” Mom starts, and I immediately freeze. “Hey, that wasn’t an invitation to stop,” she says, bumping my arm. I resume rubbing her hands and hold my breath. “Now, I’m gonna tell you, but you can’t freak out, okay? You promise me right now, otherwise I’m keeping my lips zipped.”

“I promise,” I say, but it’s a lie. The only time my mother has ever said “I need to tell you something” was when I was ten years old and she told me my father died.

She looks at the lotion bottle, not at me. “I’ve been having some dizzy spells and last week they had to call the hotel on-call doctor and—”

“Jesus Christ, Mom! Last week?” The guilt already buries me, and she hasn’t even finished what she was going to say. A few months ago, I decided to move closer to work at my mom’s insistence. For five years, I’d been spending almost three hours round trip every day to work at this office. With the move, I shaved off almost an hour a day from my commute, but now, I was further away from her. I asked myself over and over if I was making the right move, and what if something happened…

“Now listen here, Gemma Lexie Welch,” she says as she pushes herself up. Yikes. Even though I changed my name years ago, I know my mom is serious when she breaks out my birth name. “You promised you wouldn’t freak out. One more word and I ain’t gonna finish telling you what happened.”

I swallow the urge to ask every single detail. As she tells me about sporadic dizziness, and the hotel doctor rushing to help when she passed out in the room she was cleaning, I hold back brimming tears. The doctor took her blood pressure, gave her an ice pack, and told her to schedule an appointment. She says she’ll do it in the next month, which means she absolutely won’t until something else happens.

“Enough of that. I only told you in case I drop dead. You can’t blame me for never telling you nothin’,” she retorts.

I’m still worrying over my mom’s health when the news anchor’s sudden shift in tone pulls me back into the room. “Coming up next. A source close to Henry and Mariette Barlowe has announced the engagement of their youngest daughter, Annabelle Barlowe…” I leap up to grab the remote. “… to Dr. Theodore Astor, son of author and speaker Dr. George K Astor, and—”

Click.

My mom’s head snaps to the television. “Did I just hear the name Theodore Astor?” Her eyes turn as cold as the bitterness in her tone.

“Oh, I, ah, maybe, here give me your hand.” I pump a few more drops of lotion in my palm and reach for her wrist, but she pulls back.

“A Barlowe is marrying that conniving piece of shit? He doesn’t deserve to marry anyone. That man is nothin’ but evil.”

I avoid her eyes. She’s not wrong. If I think I’ve held a grudge all these years, it doesn’t even compare to my mom.

My mom is one of the gentlest people you’ve ever meet. To a fault. Our family motto is work hard and maintain the peace. You bow your head, you serve, you stay the fuck quiet. But after what happened in Boston, mama-bear mode kicked in and she saw blood. She wrote unanswered letters. She took the bus to the public library and used their computer to send emails. She stormed into the administration office and had to be escorted out by security, screaming about the “dirty fucking Astor family” who destroyed “her baby.” For months she tried to get anyone to listen, but people like me and my mom were not worthy of their time. Our words were rendered silent. Finally, with her heart more broken than mine, she gave up.

So, yeah. My mom cannot know that I’m planning Theo’s wedding.

But part of me wants to tell her I have much bigger plans for Theo than just his wedding. Plans that I’ve been sitting on for years, plans that have kept me alive during the darkest days, plans that make up for my humiliation.

And I’m just getting started.

10 Lexie

“This mission is impossible,” I say to Sydney as a taxi drives us through Manhattan on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s been ten days since Theo and Annabelle showed up at our office unannounced, five days since Sydney and I scoped every available event center we could snag an appointment to, two days since I’ve gotten more than five hours of sleep, and one day since I doubled my efforts in finding out more about Theo’s life since university.

So far, my internet search is yielding minimal results. Scholastic accomplishments and published articles in medical journals is all I can find. Both him and Annabelle’s social media is non-existent. But there’s something out there that I can use to show Annabelle who Theo really is. Seven years ago, I couldn’t prove what he did. Now, I’ll go down in flames before I let him get away again.

Sydney drops her cell phone into her purse and looks out the window. “What’s impossible? Making our way through rush hour traffic or the severe lack of available wedding venues?”

Ugh. It’s bad enough that we only have an unreasonable six months to plan a wedding, but under no circumstances can I let Sydney find out I’m digging into Theo’s past and trying to save Annabelle from a lifetime of married misery. Part of me wonders if it’d just be easier to find nothing, let the wedding happen, and take the promotion and raise I’ve worked so hard for. That thought tempts me for about three seconds before anger reappears when one of Theo’s pretentious emails lands in my inbox or I remember the power plays he’s pulled.

Tonight, I’m going to review our cancellation policy. Maybe there’s wiggle room to both save Annabelle and keep my promotion.

“Do not lose hope, Lexie. We’ve pulled some major tricks out of our hat before.” Sydney gives me a comforting squeeze on the arm. “Do I need to remind you of the Hendersons’ wedding?”

I chuckle. “No, no you don’t.” That one might go down in history as the most soap-operatic wedding of all time. The best man in love with the bride. The grandpas getting in a very slow, very drawn-out pushing match, the intoxicated groom’s mother trying to kiss the priest. Looking back, it’d make for a great rom-com. Although at the time, it felt anything but.

And, as always, Sydney was there, coaching, guiding, and keeping me from spiraling.

When we step into the hotel in the financial district, I breathe a small sigh of relief. The lobby is decent enough, the traffic like any other hotel you’d expect. It doesn’t scream Barlowe, but Annabelle herself doesn’t even scream Barlowe.

“Would you grab us a few lattes, and I’ll check in with the manager?” Sydney says.

“Double caramel, pecan oat milk, or drip with two pumps vanilla?”