My sister Beth has always been a seeker. Whether it was the three months she spent at a silent monastery in Vermont or the summer she lived out of a van in Baja, she was always looking for something that felt “real.” When she returned from a high-end “wellness retreat” in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, she claimed she had finally found it. Or rather, she’d met him.
His name was Nathaniel. Within two weeks, she was calling him the one. Within two months, they were engaged.
We only met Nathaniel via glitchy FaceTime calls. He was charming, certainly, with an accent that shifted between British and something more vaguely European. He told us he was an architect working on “sustainable infrastructure” overseas.
The rush to the altar was explained away by “Visa issues.” Beth claimed they had to be married by the end of the month or he’d be forced to return to a country currently embroiled in political unrest. My mother was skeptical, but Beth was radiant. She spent her savings on a dress, a venue, and a catering deposit, while Nathaniel supposedly handled the “administrative” side of their new life together.
The morning of the wedding was chaotic. Beth was pacing the bridal suite like a caged tiger. “Nathaniel and his groomsmen planned this whole symbolic entrance,” she told us, her voice high and brittle.
She was strangely protective of the prep room. She wouldn’t let me in. She wouldn’t let Mom in. She even snapped at her “maid of felt”—a nickname we had for her childhood best friend who was incredibly soft-spoken. “I just need it to be perfect when he arrives,” she insisted.
At 2:00 PM, the guests were seated. The string quartet began a haunting arrangement of a song I didn’t recognize. Beth walked down the aisle alone, a choice she said represented her independence before joining Nathaniel. She stood at the altar, beaming, her eyes fixed on the closed double doors at the back of the chapel.
We all turned to the doors, waiting for the “symbolic entrance” Nathaniel had promised.
Nothing.
One minute passed. Two. The quartet looped the melody, the notes sounding thinner and more desperate with each repetition. Beth laughed, a sound that didn’t reach her eyes. “They’re just building suspense!” she called out to the crowd. “He loves a grand gesture!”
Five minutes passed. The whispers started. The air in the room felt heavy, like the atmosphere before a massive storm.
Then, the back doors didn’t open. Instead, our father, who had been conspicuously missing from the front row for the last ten minutes, walked up the center aisle. He wasn’t walking toward the pews; he was walking straight for the altar.
Dad’s face was the color of ash. In one hand, he reached for the officiant’s microphone. In his other hand was a small, tattered pink journal.
I recognized it instantly. It was the diary Beth had kept during her time in Sedona—the one she said she’d lost on the flight home.
Dad’s voice shook, vibrating through the speakers. “I’m sorry. I’m honestly shocked right now. This wedding… is canceled. You all need to leave. NOW.”
The room erupted into a low roar of confusion. Beth stepped toward him, reaching for the mic. “Dad, what are you doing? Nathaniel is—”
“Nathaniel isn’t coming, Beth,” Dad said, his voice cracking. “Because Nathaniel doesn’t exist.”
As the guests began to shuffle out in a daze, Dad opened the pink journal to the final pages. He didn’t read it to the crowd, but he showed it to me and Mom later.
The “wellness retreat” hadn’t been a yoga intensive. It had been a specialized psychiatric facility Beth had checked herself into under a pseudonym. The journal wasn’t a record of a romance; it was a series of “manifestation exercises” prescribed by a questionable life coach she’d met online.
Beth hadn’t met a man named Nathaniel. She had invented him. She had sent herself the flowers. She had set up a secondary phone line to “FaceTime” us using pre-recorded clips of an actor she’d hired from a gig-work site. The “Visa issues” were a cover for the fact that there were no legal documents for a groom.
She had become so lost in the “seeking” that she had tried to manifest a life out of thin air, believing that if she just built the stage, the lead actor would have no choice but to appear.
As the last guest left, Beth didn’t cry. She just stood at the altar, looking at the closed doors, waiting for a man who was only ever made of paper and ink.
