Chương 2
Richard’s jaw tightened. “Then at least spare the child more of this.”
Daniel looked down at Sophie.
Her fingers had curled around both pieces of the photograph. The tear no longer lined up. Emma’s face was tilted away from Daniel’s shoulder.
He crouched again.
“We’re going upstairs,” he said. “You and me.”
Sophie looked toward Vanessa.
Vanessa’s face changed at that glance. Not much. A blink, a slight softening around her mouth, an impulse toward Sophie that stopped before reaching her feet.
“Sophie,” she said.
Sophie pressed herself closer to Daniel.
Vanessa looked away first.
Daniel carried the basket while Sophie held the photograph. They climbed the staircase together, his hand behind her back without pushing. Every person below watched them disappear along the upper gallery.
The bridal suite smelled of hairspray, roses, and the vanilla candle Vanessa had insisted on bringing from home because she disliked unfamiliar rooms. Makeup brushes covered the marble vanity. Six champagne glasses stood near the window, one with a pale lipstick mark. The bed had been cleared except for a white garment bag containing Vanessa’s second dress for the reception.
Daniel closed the door.
Sophie went directly to the window seat and climbed onto it with her shoes still on. She sat with her knees together and stared at the photograph.
Daniel placed the basket beside her. A few petals clung to the sleeve of his tuxedo.
“Can I see?”
She hesitated.
He held out his hand.
Sophie gave him the photograph in two pieces.
It had been taken at a botanical garden outside Philadelphia when Sophie was a baby. Emma had hated posed photographs. In nearly every formal picture from their marriage, she was blinking, laughing, looking at someone outside the frame, or making a face just as the shutter clicked. In this one, a gust of wind had blown her hair across her mouth. She had been laughing while trying to spit it out.
Daniel remembered complaining about grass stains on his jeans.
Emma had called him an old man at thirty.
He pressed the torn edges together. The line ran through Emma’s shoulder, across the blanket, and into the patch of grass beneath Sophie’s tiny bare foot.
“Can you fix it?” Sophie asked.
“Yes.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Really?”
“We’ll have someone fix it properly.”
“With tape?”
“Better than tape.”
She watched him, deciding whether adults could be trusted with a promise that specific.
“Mommy will still have a line.”
Daniel looked at the photograph.
“Probably,” he said. “A small one.”
Sophie rubbed her thumb against the basket handle. “Vanessa said Mommy wasn’t part of today.”
Daniel felt something harden beneath his ribs.
“What exactly did she say?”
Sophie’s shoulders rose.
He sat on the floor in front of her, ignoring the pull of his tuxedo trousers at the knees.
“You’re not in trouble.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me.”
“She said I could keep the picture in my room, but not downstairs. I said Mommy should see me be a flower girl.”
Daniel looked down at the two halves in his hand.
“What happened after that?”
“She told me to give it to her. I said no.”
“Did she pull it from you?”
Sophie nodded once.
“And then?”
“She said, ‘Enough.’” Sophie’s voice went thin as she imitated Vanessa. “She pulled it, and it did that.”
“Did she tear it on purpose?”
Sophie stared toward the vanity.
“I don’t know.”
That answer hurt more than certainty. A child trying to be fair while still afraid.
Daniel moved from the floor to the window seat beside her. Outside, white chairs stood in precise rows on the back lawn. The ceremony arch faced the reflecting pool. Staff members had begun speaking in clusters, their black uniforms sharp against the grass. No one had started removing anything yet. Perhaps they were waiting for a reversal.
Daniel’s phone vibrated in his pocket.
Then again.
He turned it off.
Sophie looked toward the closed door. “Are you still marrying her?”
“No.”
“Because of me?”
“No.”
She considered that.
“Because of the picture?”
“Because of what she did.”
“That’s the same thing.”
Daniel rubbed his thumb along the photograph’s torn edge.
“It isn’t your fault,” he said.
“I brought it.”
“You had every right to bring it.”
“She said it was disrespectful.”
“To whom?”
“To her.”
Daniel closed his eyes for a moment.
He had heard Vanessa use that word before. Disrespectful. Usually when Sophie climbed into their bed after a nightmare, although Vanessa never said it to Sophie’s face. Disrespectful when Daniel kept Emma’s chipped blue coffee mug in the kitchen cabinet. Disrespectful when Emma’s sister, Claire, posted an old photograph on the anniversary of her death. Disrespectful when Daniel had suggested that Sophie might carry a small locket containing Emma’s picture during the wedding.
He had treated each objection separately.
Vanessa needed reassurance.
Vanessa was trying to find her place.
Vanessa felt compared to a dead woman who could never make another mistake.
There had always been a reasonable sentence available when Daniel wanted one.
He set the photograph on the cushion.
“Sophie, did Vanessa say anything else today?”
Her white shoe moved against the fabric.
“No.”
He waited.
Sophie looked at him, then toward the door again.
“She said things would be different after.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
“She said I had to stop making everything about Mommy because we were going to be a real family now.”
The words entered the room quietly.
Daniel looked at his daughter’s face. The tear tracks had started to dry. Beneath one eye, a pale shimmer of glitter from the flower-girl makeup had collected in the crease of her skin.
“Did she say we weren’t a real family before?”
Sophie shrugged.
“Did she?”
“I don’t remember.”
He knew that meant yes.
A knock came at the door.
“Daniel?” His mother’s voice. “It’s me.”
May you like
He opened it.
Margaret Mercer stepped inside and closed the door behind her. At sixty-three, she still had the posture of the high school principal she had been before retiring, but her hands were trembling. She looked first at Sophie, then at the photograph.
