Just before the ceremony, Amy asked to speak with me privately. She stood there in her wedding gown, calm but cold. Her voice was firm.
“I need a favor,” she said, handing me a plain white envelope. “Give this to Leo. After the ceremony. Not before.”
“Amy… is everything alright?” I asked, feeling uneasy.
“He needs to hear it from you. It has to be you.”
There was something final in her tone. No panic—just quiet resolve. I turned the envelope in my hands, tempted to open it, but didn’t. My mind flashed back to a moment two months earlier, when Amy had asked me over tea, “How do you know you can trust someone?” I’d told her, “When they show you who they are. Not with words, but choices.”
At the time, she hadn’t smiled. Just stirred her tea too long.
The ceremony was beautiful. Leo looked joyful, and Amy—she was radiant, but composed. Her smile was soft, distant, like it belonged in a museum painting, not a wedding photo.
Afterward, at the reception, I found Leo alone behind the bar. I handed him the envelope.
“From Amy,” I said.
He smiled, thinking it was a love note. But as he read, his face fell. The light drained from his eyes, his hands clutched the letter like it might vanish. He read it again. Then again.
Without a word, he walked away.
I followed him.
“Leo?” I called.
“I can’t stay here,” he said flatly.
“What did she say?”
“You played along with her, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what was in it, Leo!”
But he shoved the letter back at me and drove off.
Back inside, nothing had changed. The party continued like nothing had happened. Amy was laughing by the cake.
I approached her. “Amy, where’s Leo going? What’s happening?”
“I imagine he’s figuring things out,” she said calmly.
“What was in that letter?”
She met my eyes and said, “The truth.”
Later, I walked home barefoot, calling Leo over and over. He finally picked up.
“Come get me,” I said. “My feet are killing me.”
He arrived quickly. At a nearby diner, he broke the silence.
“She knew for months,” he said. “She let me plan everything. She let me marry her.”
“She helped pick the venue,” he added bitterly. “All that time, she knew.”
I asked him why he cheated. Who was Tasha?
He looked at me, hurt and ashamed. “She didn’t mean anything. I thought it wouldn’t matter. I told myself I’d stop once we were married.”
“That’s not love, Leo,” I said. “That’s selfishness.”
He didn’t reply.
The next morning, Amy came to my door. She looked tired but not broken.
“I’m sure you know now,” she said softly.
I nodded and invited her in.
Over tea, she told me she’d filed for an annulment twenty minutes after the ceremony. Everything was ready. Leo had paid for the entire wedding—every detail.
Then she slid an envelope across the table.
“This one’s for you,” she said. “I know you love him. I did too. But I love myself more.”
I couldn’t speak. She walked out quietly, like a guest who knew it was time to go.
That night, I opened her letter.
“Janine,
You raised a good man. I believe that. But he made a choice, and now I’m making mine.
I never wanted to hurt you. This wasn’t about revenge. It was about truth. I let Leo finish what he started.
He wanted a wedding, and I gave him one. He paid for it all—and now every photo, every memory, every charge belongs to him.
– Amy.”
She left town two days later. No goodbye. Just vanished.
Three weeks after the wedding, a small box arrived. Inside was her ring, carefully placed in tissue paper. No note. Nothing else.
It wasn’t bitter. It was deliberate.
And in the end, it was Amy’s silence that spoke the loudest.
What would you have done?