A young woman is standing at the altar about to marry a man she doesn’t love when she sees among her guests her dead fiancé. Sarah looked into the mirror and tucked the fine gold chain she always wore out of sight. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, but she was on the verge of tears. “Now, don’t you cry!” said the makeup artist pouting, and quickly dusting a sheer veil of face powder under Sarah’s eyes, “You’ll spoil my work!”
Across the room, Sarah’s mother smiled thinly. “Tears of joy,” she said, but she knew they were tears of grief. Sarah adjusted her wedding dress and felt the comforting weight of the engagement ring against her chest. A delicate ring with a tiny diamond, so different from the 15-carat monstrosity now weighing down her left hand. “This is your choice,” Sarah told herself softly. “And now that David is gone, it doesn’t really matter who you marry…” The man she was marrying was pleasant enough and kind, but he was her father’s choice.
Frank Melville was the son of Sarah’s father’s partner, and their marriage would consolidate a business relationship that had lasted for decades and had made both men millionaires many times over. Her true love was dead, dead three years ago in a horrific car accident, her love, David O’Reilly. David had been her driver when Sarah was a young celebrity chased by the paparazzi who lived on recording the misdeeds of the young and rich. Sarah had noticed David watching her through the rearview mirror sometimes and turned her face away in disdain. Then one night, at a club, she had drunk too much, or someone had slipped her something.
She felt ill and helpless, and she called David. Within minutes he was there to pick her up at the door of the club. He jumped out of the car and helped her walk to the curb, where her legs had folded. To Sarah’s shame, she vomited, and David held her head and rubbed her back, murmuring senseless comforting words. He carried her into the car, cleaned her face, took care of her.
From then on, it had been Sarah watching David, and before long she’d convinced him to go out with her on a date. Before long they were in love, and one day David presented her with a delicate circle of gold and its tiny crumb of a diamond. Sarah said yes, of course, and had been naive enough to believe that her parents would be equally happy to see their only child marry a driver without a cent to his name.
“But daddy,” Sarah cried. “You always said all that mattered was that I was happy!” “You can be just as happy with a rich man,” her father told her. “Forget O’Reilly, he’s a loser.” But Sarah loved David and she fought for their love. She knew that she’d eventually wear her parents down, that they would accept David. That happy day she dreamed of never came. Instead, there was a phone call from the police while she was with her family in the Hamptons, and Sarah saw her father’s face pale.
