By the time Ava returned from the hospital, the story was already on local news sites. “Tragedy Strikes Newlyweds: Groom Dies Minutes After Wedding.” But what the headlines didn’t say — what they couldn’t say — was how surreal it felt to unzip her wedding dress and realize she was now a widow in white. Her bouquet was still in the passenger seat of her friend’s car. Her phone still had texts from Michael that read, “See you at the altar, love.”

The world expected answers.

So did she.

The next day, investigators swarmed the wedding venue — a rustic vineyard owned by a longtime friend of the Greene family. They interviewed everyone: waiters, caterers, musicians. They tested the champagne, the hors d’oeuvres, the wedding cake. Everything turned up clean.

Except one glass.

The flute Michael had been holding during the toast showed faint traces of potassium chloride — a compound lethal in high doses, commonly used in lethal injections. It was colorless. Tasteless. Nearly impossible to detect without a full-spectrum scan. Whoever used it… knew exactly what they were doing.

Detective Lisa Harrow took over the case. She was thorough, tireless, and uncomfortably blunt. “This wasn’t a medical episode,” she told Ava in the hallway of her parents’ house. “This was murder.”

Ava blinked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Someone at your wedding wanted Michael dead.”

The theory was as insane as it was horrifying. But as the investigation unfolded, a picture began to form — one no one expected.

It started with a groomsman. Then another. Whispered mentions of tension between Michael and his business partner. Of a late-night phone call the week before the wedding. Of a canceled life insurance policy… and a new one, signed and approved two days before the ceremony.

$2.5 million.

The beneficiary?

Tyler Cain, Michael’s best man.

Tyler had always been the charismatic one. The type who turned heads at parties. He had been Michael’s college roommate, then his co-founder in a biotech startup that had recently hit a rough patch. Investors were pulling out. Their funding was drying up. Michael had hinted to Ava that he wanted to walk away from the company altogether and start something new — a small design firm, maybe. Something quiet.

But Tyler had other plans. And he needed Michael to stay in the game. Or, failing that… he needed a payoff.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, Tyler had taken out massive debts. Crypto. Private loans. A failed side investment in a startup built on AI “emotion mapping.” He was drowning, but hiding it well.

The poisoned glass — police believed — was meant to solve all of it.

Tyler didn’t confess. Not right away. But when confronted with the insurance papers, the toxicology reports, and GPS data showing he had stopped at a chemical supplier five days before the wedding — he cracked.

“It was supposed to be painless,” he said during his third interview. “Quick. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

His voice trembled. “I didn’t want to hurt Ava. I just… I needed a way out.”

The courtroom was packed the day he went on trial. Ava sat silently in the front row, a black ribbon pinned to her lapel. Tyler avoided her eyes. He pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 30 years.

But for Ava, the damage had already been done.

She didn’t return to their apartment. She donated her wedding dress. She deleted all social media except for one account, where she posted on the 1st of each month: “Still choosing peace.”

In time, she moved to Maine. Opened a small art studio. Clients describe her as gentle, calm, but distant. There’s a photo on her desk — Michael, in his tux, grinning at the camera, holding up a glass.

No one asks her about it.

But everyone notices how, every evening before closing, she lights a single candle near the window and whispers something no one can quite make out.

Some say it’s a prayer.

Others say it’s a promise.

Epilogue

The vineyard where they were married shut down the following spring. Too much press. Too many questions. It was eventually sold to a couple from Chicago, who turned it into a retreat center for grief counseling.

Ava visited once. Quietly. She stayed only an hour. Long enough to walk the stone path beneath the sycamore trees. Long enough to stand where she had once said “I do.”

She left a single champagne flute on the altar.

And a note.

“He chose love. I choose to live.”