Chương 5
“I called my husband because someone deliberately assaulted me.”
“With wine.”
“With a glass tray.”
“You weren’t injured.”
“That wasn’t known when it happened.”
“You always do this.”
Meredith went still.
Elaine took a breath.
“You take one unpleasant thing and turn it into proof that your entire childhood was some tragedy.”
Vanessa whispered, “Mom, stop.”
“No, I am tired of this.”
Elaine pointed at Meredith.
“You were difficult.”
Robert closed his eyes.
“You were sensitive about everything.”
“Elaine.”
“You never fit in, and instead of accepting that, you blamed the rest of us for noticing.”
Meredith felt Daniel’s pulse beneath her fingers.
Fast.
Her own had become strangely slow.
She looked at her mother and saw, with sudden clarity, that there would be no perfect sentence that made Elaine understand.
There had never been one.
She had spent half her life composing it anyway.
“I’m not going to file a police report tonight,” Meredith said.
Elaine blinked.
The change in subject seemed to unsettle her.
Marcus looked toward Meredith.
Daniel did not.
He already knew she was thinking.
Meredith turned to the hotel manager.
“I do want the footage preserved.”
“Of course.”
“And I want Luis’s name kept out of any public statement unless he agrees otherwise.”
Luis stared at her.
The manager nodded.
“We can do that.”
Meredith looked at Luis.
“You should probably get a lawyer before you sign anything the hotel gives you.”
His face tightened with confusion.
“I can’t afford—”
“Marcus can give you the number of someone independent.”
Daniel glanced at her.
She shook her head before he could speak.
“Not your attorney.”
A faint expression crossed his face.
“Understood.”
Luis swallowed.
“Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not sure I am.”
Meredith adjusted Daniel’s jacket around her shoulders.
“You still took the money.”
He looked down.
“I know.”
“But I don’t think destroying your job will fix my family.”
Elaine made a disgusted sound.
Meredith turned toward her.
“This isn’t forgiveness.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“No.”
Meredith looked at Vanessa.
“That’s part of the problem.”
Vanessa’s mascara had smudged beneath one eye.
She looked suddenly younger than thirty.
Not innocent.
Just young.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Meredith waited.
Vanessa’s voice broke.
“I thought it would be one stupid thing.”
Andrew gave a short, incredulous laugh.
“One stupid thing?”
Vanessa turned on him.
“You think you’re perfect?”
“No.”
“I saw the messages with your brother about my family.”
Andrew froze.
Robert looked up.
“What messages?”
Vanessa wiped under her eye with the heel of her hand.
“Nothing.”
Andrew stared at her.
“You went through my phone?”
“You left it open.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Oh, now privacy matters?”
The argument ignited so quickly that Meredith almost stepped backward.
Andrew lowered his voice, which somehow made him sound angrier.
“You paid a waiter to attack your sister because your mother thought her dress was getting attention.”
“Stop calling it an attack.”
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know.”
Vanessa looked around the ballroom and seemed to notice the guests again.
Her face crumpled.
“I don’t know.”
Robert put his glass down.
“Everyone needs to leave.”
Elaine stared at him.
“Excuse me?”
“The reception is over.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am.”
“We paid for this.”
Meredith almost smiled at the irony, but the expression died before it formed.
Robert looked at her and then away.
“No,” he said.
“Apparently we didn’t.”
That finally silenced Elaine.
Across the room, people began collecting purses, shawls, and phones with the awkward urgency of guests escaping a fire alarm they suspected might become a felony.
No one knew where to look.
The band leader bent toward a microphone, seemed to reconsider, and simply switched off the stage lights.
Tiffany approached Meredith.
She had wrapped both hands around her clutch.
“Meredith.”
Meredith waited.
Tiffany glanced at Daniel, then back at her.
“That dress really is silk?”
Meredith stared at her for two seconds.
Then she laughed.
It came out exhausted and genuine.
“Tiffany.”
“What?”
“Go home.”
Tiffany nodded.
“Okay.”
She took three steps, turned back, and whispered, “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know about the wine.”
“I know.”
Tiffany looked relieved, which annoyed Meredith enough that she nearly took the words back.
Instead she watched her cousin disappear into the departing crowd.
Daniel leaned close.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
“I’m improving.”
He touched the back of her neck.
It was the first comforting thing anyone had done all night.
Meredith looked toward Vanessa.
Her sister sat alone now.
Andrew had moved several yards away and was speaking quietly with his father.
Elaine stood rigid beside an abandoned centerpiece.
Robert remained near the table, one hand braced against its edge.
Meredith had wanted them to understand they had humiliated the wrong woman.
Looking at them now, she wondered whether the deeper mistake had been assuming humiliation had ever been the real problem.
She slipped her hand into Daniel’s.
“Take me home.”
He nodded.
They had almost reached the ballroom doors when Vanessa called her name.
Meredith stopped.
Daniel did not pull her forward or turn her back.
Vanessa stood several feet away, holding up the hem of her wedding gown with one fist.
“Can I come see you tomorrow?”
Meredith looked at her sister for a long time.
“Not tomorrow.”
Vanessa nodded once.
The answer hurt her.
Meredith let it.
“Call me next week.”
Vanessa’s eyes filled again.
“Okay.”
Meredith turned toward the doors.
Behind her, chairs scraped across the ballroom floor as the wedding dissolved into coats, whispers, unpaid tips, family arguments, and three hundred altered versions of what had happened.
Beside her, Daniel squeezed her hand once.
May you like
Meredith stepped into the hotel corridor with wine drying against her skin and the uneasy knowledge that walking away from her family was going to be much simpler than deciding what, if anything, she wanted to walk back toward.
By the time Meredith and Daniel reached Beacon Hill, the wine had dried into a sticky stiffness that made the silk scrape against her knees.
