What Roz Chose
She didn't cry while she took it off. That surprised her more than anything else that night — that her hands stayed steady, that the veil came free in one smooth motion, that she could fold it over her arm like something ordinary, like laundry, instead of like the end of a year of her life.
"Priya has my car keys," she told her father quietly. "Can you drive me to the hospital? I want to make sure Delphine's okay before I go home."
Gerald didn't ask why. He just offered his arm, the way he had two hours earlier walking her down the aisle, and this time she took it walking the other direction, out through the tall double doors, past the scattered roses, past two hundred guests who parted for her a second time that night, this time in something closer to respect than shock.
At the hospital, she found Priya in the waiting room and Delphine resting in a curtained bay, the false-labor scare fully passed, a monitor tracing a small steady heartbeat that filled the quiet room like a second pulse.
"You didn't have to come," Delphine said, wary, one hand still resting on her belly.
"I know," Roz said. She pulled a chair close, still in her torn wedding dress, still smelling faintly of white roses. "I'm not here for him. I don't think I'll ever be in a room with him again if I can help it. I'm here because you're about to raise a kid alone in six weeks, and whatever else is true, that baby didn't lie to anyone."
Delphine's eyes filled, and this time she let them. "Why would you help me?"
"Because somebody should have helped me tonight before I had to hear it from a stranger's phone," Roz said. "I'm not going to be your friend. I might not even like you very much, honestly, not yet. But I know what it's like to find out you built your whole life on a lie someone else told you. I'm not going to let a baby start there too, if I can help it."
Three weeks later, Roz would leave Windmere Manor's deposit unclaimed, sell the ring through a broker without ceremony, and take a partnership offer at a florist collective two states over that she'd been quietly considering for a year and never had the nerve to accept. She would send Delphine a small, unglamorous check every month until the baby turned one, no note attached, no strings, no forwarding address that traced back to Weston at all.
She never spoke to Weston again. She didn't need the last word. She'd already taken the microphone, and said everything that mattered, in front of every person who needed to hear it — including, finally, herself.