Chương 2
Alden’s mouth opened.
Maren turned to the bride. “You have a cake to cut.”
Leah studied her. Years earlier, when Leah had been a young lieutenant with blood on one sleeve and seawater in her boots, Maren had learned the exact look she wore before refusing an order she considered foolish.
“Five minutes,” Maren said.
Leah’s jaw tightened.
“Please.”
That word did what rank could not. Leah nodded.
Calder moved to block Griffin when he tried to follow Maren. “Let her breathe.”
“I was going to speak with my sister.”
“You were going to manage her.”
Griffin’s expression sharpened. “This is a family matter.”
Calder looked around the ballroom, where half the guests were pretending not to listen and the other half had abandoned the effort. “Not anymore.”
Maren walked between the tables toward a service corridor near the arched windows. Guests stepped aside. A few murmured congratulations. One elderly man touched her forearm and said he had served in Vietnam. She thanked him without stopping. A young woman asked whether they might take a photograph later. Maren said, “Tonight belongs to the bride.”
At the edge of the ballroom, she passed the white-and-gold wedding cake. Its top tier leaned slightly to the left, an imperfection so small the pastry staff had disguised it with sugar roses. Maren noticed because she always noticed weight, balance, and the ways people compensated for things they could not repair.
The service door swung shut behind her.
The corridor beyond was bright, narrow, and practical. Metal carts stood against cream walls. A hotel employee was refilling a tray of coffee cups while another argued softly into a headset about missing vegetarian entrées. The ordinary noise helped.
Maren stopped beside a linen station and pressed two fingers against the stem of the empty glass she had carried out without realizing it.
Her hand was shaking.
Only a little.
She set the glass on the cart.
The service door opened again. Calder came through first. Leah followed, her veil removed now and folded over one arm. She had handed the microphone to someone else.
“I asked for five minutes,” Maren said.
“It’s been forty seconds,” Calder answered.
“I rounded.”
He stopped a few feet away. “I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
“All of it.”
Leah came closer. “Not the toast.”
Maren looked at her.
“I’m not sorry for that,” Leah said. “I am sorry he spoke to you that way.”
“He has spoken to me that way before.”
“That doesn’t improve it.”
“No.”
Calder rubbed a thumb over the white boutonniere on his lapel, crushing one petal. “I should have warned him.”
“You should have told him I was coming.”
“I thought if he knew, he’d stop you at the door.”
“He nearly did that without warning.”
Calder looked miserable. On his wedding night, with hundreds of guests waiting and photographers documenting every moment, he had the face of the eleven-year-old boy who once telephoned Maren from a school bathroom because his parents were fighting and he did not know whom else to call.
That call had come nine years after Alden expelled her. Griffin had never learned about it.
Maren had spoken to Calder for twenty minutes about nothing important. He told her the bathroom smelled like bleach and somebody had drawn a dinosaur on the hand dryer. She told him to find his teacher, then mailed him a book about ships without a return address.
Calder had found her again as an adult.
“I invited you,” he said, “because I wanted one person here who wasn’t measuring the wedding by what it cost.”
Leah glanced at him. “That’s romantic.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Maren leaned against the wall, careful not to wrinkle her dress. “You invited me because Leah asked.”
“I invited you because you’re my aunt.”
“You called me Admiral for the first three months.”
“I was nervous.”
“You sent formal calendar requests for dinner.”
“I like calendars.”
Leah touched his arm. “He color-codes vacations.”
“That is unrelated.”
Maren almost smiled. It hurt more than she expected.
From inside the ballroom came the muffled sound of applause. Someone had resumed the program. The bandleader was speaking, his voice buoyant and professional, asking guests to turn their attention to the happy couple. He had probably rescued dozens of wealthy families from themselves.
Leah rested the microphone against a linen cart.
“You can leave,” she said. “I’ll understand.”
Calder looked at his bride, surprised.
Maren did too.
Leah’s face was composed, but her fingers had tightened around the lace of her skirt. “I would hate it,” she continued. “I would hate that he drove you out. But I won’t ask you to stand in there and absorb whatever they decide to do next.”
“They?”
“Your father and Griffin.”
Maren looked toward the closed door.
She could picture Alden surrounded by men who called him sir even when he was wrong. She could picture Griffin offering explanations, each one designed to preserve the family’s dignity while transferring blame to somebody less powerful. They had always worked well together when reality became inconvenient.
Her instinct was to leave. She had a car waiting, a quiet room at a smaller hotel across town, and a morning flight. She could remove herself with the efficiency she had learned at nineteen, when she left the Rowe house with one suitcase and forty-three dollars in cash because Alden had canceled the card in her wallet before she reached the gate.
But the cake still had not been cut.
The bride had taken off her veil to follow her into a service hallway.
Maren lifted the microphone from the cart and held it out to Leah.
“You have guests.”
“So do you.”
“No. I have witnesses.”
Calder closed his eyes briefly.
Maren touched his crushed boutonniere, trying to straighten the petal. It remained bent. “I’m staying until you leave.”
“You don’t have to.”
May you like
“I know.”
That was the difference between staying and surrendering. At nineteen, she had not known it yet.
