I want to tell you who I am, because the fact that I was the person doing this is part of why it happened. My name is Gerald. I am thirty-eight years old. I am the husband of Tish, who is the older sister of Paige, who is the first cousin of the bride. The bride's name — was — Meredith. I had met Meredith six times in my life. Twice at Thanksgivings. Twice at Tish's family reunions in Beaufort. Once at Paige's baby shower. Once at my own wedding. I did not know Meredith well. I had, however,

known her fiancé Hunter for eleven months, because Hunter had worked at the consulting firm where I was a senior partner. I had personally interviewed him for the job. I had personally hired him. And I had personally, eight weeks before his wedding, sat across from him at a going-away happy hour at a steakhouse in Charleston and listened to him, four drinks in, tell me some things he should not have told me, because he had forgotten — or maybe he had never really registered — that Meredith was married into my wife's family. He had told me about the three ex-wives. Not one. Three. And the divorces that, in his telling, had been "more like extended separations."