Chương 2
“They don’t know I helped.”
“That improves the story tremendously.”
She had told him she needed one day in which the Hales could not accuse her of showing off, buying attention, or trying to overshadow Vanessa.
Daniel had watched her for a long moment.
Finally he had picked up his coffee.
“Call me if that changes.”
Meredith had kissed his cheek.
“It won’t.”
Standing in the ballroom with Cabernet running down her calf, she found that prediction almost funny.
Her thumb hovered over Daniel’s name.
Robert was still talking.
“This is exactly what I mean about Meredith,” he told the room, although the microphone had lowered toward his chest.
“Everything has to become a production.”
Meredith pressed Call.
Daniel answered before the first full ring.
“Mer?”
She closed her eyes for half a second.
His voice changed immediately.
“What happened?”
“I changed my mind.”
Nothing followed for perhaps two seconds.
Daniel was not a man who filled silence because silence frightened him.
“Where are you?”
“Ballroom.”
“I’ll come in.”
“Daniel.”
“Yes?”
“Bring Marcus.”
Another pause.
“And security?”
She looked at the waiter.
“Yes.”
“I’m coming.”
She ended the call.
Vanessa pushed back her chair.
Her new husband, Andrew Mercer, caught her wrist.
It was a small movement, but Meredith noticed Vanessa stiffen.
Andrew said something Meredith could not hear.
Vanessa pulled free.
“Can we please stop this?”
Her voice carried without the microphone.
“This is my wedding.”
Meredith looked at her sister.
Vanessa was beautiful in the meticulous way their mother admired.
Her ivory gown had been photographed from six angles before the ceremony because Elaine had disliked the light near the hotel windows.
Her veil had required its own chair in the limousine.
Now a tiny muscle jumped near Vanessa’s jaw.
“You’re right,” Meredith said.
“I’d like to stop it too.”
“Then go change.”
“I didn’t bring another dress.”
Elaine made an exasperated sound.
“There’s a boutique in the hotel.”
“At eight-thirty at night?”
“For heaven’s sake, Meredith, solve one problem without making everyone participate.”
A woman near the dance floor quietly set down her champagne.
Meredith recognized her as one of Elaine’s charity-board friends.
Their eyes met.
The woman looked away.
That was how the Hale family had survived itself for decades.
People looked away.
Meredith turned toward the waiter.
“What’s your name?”
He hesitated.
“Luis.”
“Did someone tell you to spill that wine on me, Luis?”
Vanessa went white.
Robert slapped the microphone onto the table.
“That’s enough.”
Luis shook his head too quickly.
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay.”
Meredith nodded.
“I’m giving you another chance.”
“I tripped.”
“On what?”
He looked at the floor.
There was nothing there except the broken glass from his tray.
“I just tripped.”
Robert came down from the platform.
He had always been physically imposing, not because he was especially tall but because he believed space belonged to him.
People moved when Robert Hale approached.
Meredith did not.
He stopped a few feet away.
“You’ve made your point.”
“I haven’t made any point.”
“You insulted your sister’s wedding, you interrogated an employee, and now you’re standing there trying to turn an accident into some conspiracy because you can’t stand one evening not being about you.”
That hurt.
Meredith hated that it hurt.
The ridiculous part was not the accusation.
It was that some private, damaged piece of her still wanted her father to recognize how unfair it was.
She had spent years learning that adulthood did not automatically kill childish hopes.
Sometimes it merely taught you to hide them better.
“I was seated at Table 19,” she said.
Robert blinked.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“No, what about Table 19?”
“Nothing.”
Her voice had gone quieter.
“That’s sort of the point.”
Elaine joined them, lifting the hem of her beaded gown so it would not touch the spilled wine.
“Oh, please don’t start with the seating chart.”
“I didn’t.”
“You’ve been sulking about it all night.”
“I arrived forty minutes ago.”
“And managed to make those forty minutes exhausting.”
Meredith laughed.
She did not mean to.
It escaped her, small and ugly.
Elaine stared.
“What’s funny?”
“I paid the remaining balance on this ballroom yesterday.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
Andrew looked sharply toward her.
Robert said, “What are you talking about?”
Meredith immediately regretted saying it.
Not because it was untrue.
Because she had promised herself she would not use money as a weapon merely because her family did.
Vanessa recovered first.
“I never asked you to do that.”
“No.”
Meredith looked at her.
“Mom did.”
Elaine’s chin lifted.
“I asked you for a temporary bridge because the florist increased the deposit.”
“It was forty-eight thousand dollars.”
A murmur moved through the nearest tables.
Robert looked at Elaine.
“Forty-eight?”
“Oh, don’t do this here.”
“You told me it was twelve.”
“Robert.”
“You said twelve.”
Vanessa pushed through the chairs.
“This is insane.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
For the first time that evening, Meredith felt something other than anger toward her sister.
Vanessa looked frightened.
Not embarrassed.
Frightened.
Andrew stood behind her, pale and motionless.
Meredith noticed his hand was still wrapped around his napkin.
“Vanessa,” Meredith said.
Her sister’s eyes snapped toward her.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Just don’t.”
The ballroom doors opened.
Four men in black suits entered.
They did not stride in formation or scan the room theatrically.
Two remained by the doors while the others moved aside for a fifth man walking behind them.
Recognition did not pass through the ballroom all at once.
It traveled table by table.
A man near the bar stood.
Someone whispered Daniel’s surname.
Then someone else repeated it.
Daniel Kessler crossed the ballroom without looking at the guests.
He was still wearing the dark suit he had flown in from New York, his tie slightly crooked and his hair flattened on one side from the headset he wore on the plane.
May you like
Meredith had seen magazine photographs in which editors made him look cold enough to own winter.
Right now he simply looked worried.
