When he didn’t show, Sheridan s family had egg on their faces. They received a text 15 minutes after the ceremony was supposed to have started. His father stood and said, “He’s not coming.” Gasps and whispers flew around the room. Sheridan’s family rose from their seats.
“What do you mean he’s not coming?” Eliza’s voice was panicky and shrill. “What do you mean? Where is he?” She demanded.
His father coolly said, “He didn’t say.”
Eliza repeatedly rang Sheridan to no avail.
Her brother Antoine, turned to the wedding guests and said, “I’m sorry, the wedding is off. Take your gifts and leave.”
A few guests hesitated but the majority left quickly. Gossipmongers said, “She got what she deserved” and “Serves her right.” Some even laughed at her predicament.
Eliza wanted to run from the humiliation. She asked herself over and over, why? Was she too possessive, too needy, too demanding? If she changed her ways, would he come back? But the profound silence gave her no way of knowing definitively.
A day after the debacle, her questions were answered. A phone call that she’d let go straight to messages said, “Eliza,” Hearing Sheridan’s voice her heart hopefully skipped a beat. “I’m sorry but I can’t. I-I-I couldn’t commit. It’s not you it’s me.”
He should have told her before the wedding day. She would have been hurt but it would have been much easier than this.
Eliza became a nuclear missile of impotent rage. If only she could have poisoned him, shot him, chopped Sheridan to pieces with a meat cleaver, blown him up with a bazooka. Publicly hung him on a gallows made especially for the occasion. Any number of satisfying imagined scenarios floated around her brain, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t do harm to a fly.
Anger led Eliza to rid herself of everything that reminded her of Sheridan. She burnt old letters and cards. She donated the clothing he’d left at her place, the gifts he’d given over the course of their courtship. She erased all photos of Sheridan from her phone. Blocked him on social media. Sitting in the malodorous home, hair matted, askew. Her once pretty face turned ugly over time. The wedding cake, became a pile of dust. The bridal bouquet of roses and oriental lilies, turned into dried sticks.
Eliza wore her wedding dress, stained with sherry, tears and glow, (ladies don’t sweat, they glow) as her oh-poor-me banner. Eventually, the thought that, ’I’m like this because he did this to me,’ became a mantra. Like Miss Haversham, Eliza, the once fearless, entitled woman with the perfect life, realised that she was far from perfect and in shame, she hid from everyone.
