Not Elise.
Not my father.
Me.
The ghost.
The side character.
The one who was supposed to sit quietly at the kid’s table and stay invisible.
I glanced around.
My mother looked confused.
My father looked furious.
Elise looked betrayed.
And for a moment, I just stood there letting it all settle.
The weight of what I’d done.
The reality of what was unraveling around them.
Then I nodded once, slowly, and walked toward the side door.
We stepped outside into the cool evening air.
The sky was a dusky purple, the sun dipping low behind the vineyard hills.
Carson leaned against the railing of the porch, running a hand through his hair.
He didn’t say anything at first, just stared out over the grape vines like they held the answers.
Then finally, he sighed.
“So that was real?” he asked. “That clip of Elise.”
I nodded.
“Completely unedited. The date stamps on the bottom if you look close enough. Her words, not mine.”
He didn’t react right away.
Then he let out a dry laugh, short and bitter.
“You know, I always had this feeling that she was with me for reasons. But I told myself I was being paranoid, that maybe I wasn’t funny enough or deep enough or whatever, but that she loved me.”
He looked at me, and for the first time his expression wasn’t smug or polite.
It was just tired.
“You blew up her whole wedding.”
“I didn’t blow up anything,” I replied. “I told the truth. She lit the fuse a long time ago.”
He nodded slowly, then looked back toward the reception hall.
“She’s going to hate you for the rest of her life.”
“She already did,” I said quietly. “She just smiled while doing it.”
We stood there for another moment before Carson pushed off the railing and walked toward the parking lot.
“I’m not going back in there,” he muttered. “Not for the dance. Not for the cake. I’m not marrying someone who talks about me like that.”
“Carson,” I called out as he reached his car. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t plan to play that clip. Not originally, but when I saw what table they put me at, and what my dad said when I got there…”
I shook my head.
“I realized they weren’t going to change. None of them, not her, not him, not anyone. So, I stopped protecting them.”