Chương 8
“What do you want to do?”
“Pay our share.”
“We already did.”
“Then lose it.”
He looked at her.
“You’re willing to lose forty thousand dollars on principle?”
“When you say it like that, I sound stupid.”
“It is stupid.”
She glared.
He held up a hand.
“Financially.”
“You work in private equity. Everything is financial.”
“That is wildly offensive.”
She almost smiled.
He saw it and smiled too.
Then the smile faded.
“Emily, accepting help from Arthur doesn’t make you owned.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She looked down at the shredded paper sleeve.
The uncomfortable answer was no.
Not completely.
Victoria had spent four years making generosity feel like a debt instrument.
Trips. Dinners. Dresses Emily had not asked for. Introductions she had not requested.
Every gift seemed to arrive with invisible paperwork.
Arthur was different.
But Emily had started treating all Whitmore money as if it carried the same conditions.
“That’s not fair to him,” she said.
Daniel nodded.
“No.”
She sighed.
“I hate this family.”
“Currently, same.”
She laughed.
The student nearby looked up.
Emily lowered her voice.
“I don’t want us making decisions because we’re angry at your mother.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
“What decision are we talking about?”
She knew what he meant.
Marriage.
They had not set a new date.
They had not even agreed they definitely would.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel looked away.
That uncertainty hurt him.
Emily saw it.
She did not remove it.
The months after the failed wedding stripped romance out of decisions they had once imagined would be romantic.
Therapy schedules.
Attorney calls.
Insurance claims.
Deposits.
Lease renewals.
Questions about whether Emily wanted the engagement ring back on her hand.
She had removed it the night of the wedding because her fingers swelled after climbing the wall.
She did not put it back on.
Daniel noticed.
He did not ask for three weeks.
When he finally did, they were walking along Lake Michigan on a windy Saturday morning.
“Are you still engaged to me?”
Emily stopped.
Daniel immediately looked embarrassed.
“That came out wrong.”
“No, it didn’t.”
A cyclist rang a bell behind them.
They moved aside.
Emily shoved her hands into her coat pockets.
“I don’t know what engaged means right now.”
“It means we intend to get married.”
“Do we?”
Daniel looked at the lake.
“I do.”
Emily felt tears rise and became annoyed by them.
She blinked hard.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I know.”
He said it without resentment.
That almost made her cry anyway.
Daniel continued.
“I’ve spent a lot of time being angry at my mother.”
“Reasonably.”
“Too much time.”
Emily looked at him.
“I thought if I could prove what she did, everything would become simple.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
He kicked at a pebble.
“I still love her.”
Emily nodded.
“I know.”
“And I hate what she did.”
“I know.”
“And part of me keeps wanting some explanation that turns her back into the person I thought she was.”
Emily said nothing.
Daniel smiled without humor.
“I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds human.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“It isn’t always.”
They walked again.
After a while Daniel said, “My therapist thinks I confuse peace with safety.”
Emily looked sideways at him.
“That sounds irritatingly accurate.”
“I’m paying two hundred twenty dollars an hour to be insulted.”
“Good.”
He laughed.
Then his face became serious.
“I let my mother make you smaller because it kept things easier for me.”
Emily’s throat tightened.
“I didn’t see it.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
She stopped again.
People passed them.
A jogger. A couple with a dog. A man carrying a paper bag from a bakery.
Nothing in the world recognized that Daniel had just said the sentence Emily had needed for years.
She took the engagement ring from her coat pocket.
Daniel stared.
“You’ve been carrying it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s unsettling.”
Emily smiled.
Then she slid it onto her finger.
Daniel did not touch her.
He looked at the ring.
Then at her.
“We’re not setting a date.”
“No.”
“We’re not having another giant wedding.”
“Please God.”
“And if your mother is ever in our lives again, it happens on terms we agree on.”
“Yes.”
“Together.”
“Yes.”
Emily studied him.
“You answered too fast.”
Daniel laughed.
“Sorry. Let me create conflict.”
She elbowed him.
For the first time since the ballroom, the ring felt like a promise rather than evidence.
Victoria’s case took almost nine months.
That was long enough for outrage to cool.
Long enough for the internet to forget.
Long enough for Emily to become bored with being the person something terrible had happened to.
There were motions.
Evidence disputes.
A request to exclude parts of the phone analysis.
A request to limit references to the wedding guests.
Victoria’s attorney argued that public attention had contaminated witnesses.
The judge disagreed with part of that argument and agreed with another.
Nothing happened cleanly.
Then the defense produced its first meaningful contradiction.
A hotel housekeeper had entered Victoria’s suite at 4:51 p.m.
She remembered seeing no phone in the bathroom trash.
If accurate, that meant the phone could have arrived later.
Victoria returned to her suite at 5:02.
The phone was not discovered until after six.
The prosecution’s timeline weakened.
Daniel read the filing at his apartment.
He called Emily.
“What if she’s telling the truth about the phone?”
Emily sat at her kitchen counter.
“Which version?”
“That someone else put it there.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then we don’t know.”
He exhaled.
“I hate that sentence.”
“Me too.”
They resisted turning uncertainty into certainty.
That became harder when another piece of evidence appeared.
Claire, the wedding planner, had entered Victoria’s suite at 5:17 looking for medication.
Not for Victoria.
For herself.
May you like
She carried anti-anxiety tablets she had left in a small emergency pouch upstairs.
Claire had not initially mentioned the visit because she considered it irrelevant and because she was deeply embarrassed about taking medication during an event.
