Chương 2
It was the only question she could have answered.
“Sit with me.”
He took her arm. “Done.”
They entered the ballroom without Julian.
Elise abandoned the planned announcement of the newly married couple. She simply welcomed the guests to dinner. Plates began arriving. Chairs moved. Silverware touched china. The sound of a room trying to behave normally rose around Natalie in cautious layers.
She sat at the long head table between Peter and Maya. Julian’s chair remained empty on her other side.
Maya set the white roses beneath the table and leaned close.
“I can have a car here in five minutes.”
“I don’t want to leave yet.”
“That was not a picture. That was a hostage video with formalwear.”
Despite herself, Natalie let out a breath that nearly became a laugh.
Maya’s face softened. “There you are.”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re still making jokes in your head. That’s medically promising.”
Peter reached for his water and missed it by an inch. He corrected without comment.
He was not a man who believed anger improved with an audience. During Natalie’s childhood, he had handled arguments by washing dishes with dangerous thoroughness. When her mother died, he had spent three weeks repairing a backyard gate that had never been broken. Natalie had inherited the same faith in useful motion.
A server placed roasted chicken in front of her. She stared at the crisp skin and the carefully arranged carrots.
Across the room, Julian stood near the ballroom doors speaking to Eleanor. His posture had changed. One hand moved through his hair, disturbing the careful shape the stylist had given it. Eleanor remained perfectly still.
Richard Ashford joined them. He said something short. Julian looked toward Natalie.
She turned away before their eyes met.
“You don’t have to decide anything tonight,” Peter said.
“I already decided something today.”
“You decided to marry him based on what you knew this morning.”
The sentence did not accuse her. That made it worse.
“What if I should have known more?”
Peter unfolded his napkin and folded it again.
“Then you know more now.”
Maya stabbed a carrot with unnecessary force.
“I’ve been telling her Eleanor is a Bond villain since the engagement party.”
“You called her an expensive ghost,” Natalie said.
“She can be two things.”
Peter almost smiled. It vanished when Julian approached the table.
He stopped behind his empty chair.
“Can I sit down?”
Natalie looked at the chair. White roses trailed from its back. A handwritten card marked his place: JULIAN ASHFORD, GROOM.
“It’s your reception,” she said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Peter shifted, but Natalie touched his sleeve.
“Sit.”
Julian lowered himself into the chair. He did not touch the food that appeared in front of him. His knee moved once beneath the table, then stopped.
“I told my mother that was unacceptable,” he said.
Maya made a soft sound.
Natalie looked at her plate. “When?”
“What?”
“When did you tell her?”
“Just now.”
“After the picture.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t think it was unacceptable while you were standing there?”
Julian glanced at Peter.
Peter picked up his fork and began cutting his chicken into precise pieces. The message was clear: he would not rescue either of them.
“My mother said she wanted one photograph of the original family,” Julian said.
“Original.”
“I’m telling you what she said, not what I believe.”
“And what do you believe?”
“That you’re my wife.”
Maya leaned back in her chair. “Wildly convincing presentation.”
“Maya,” Natalie said.
“No, I’m done.” Maya picked up her wine. “For at least thirty seconds.”
Julian’s voice dropped. “I didn’t want a scene.”
Natalie looked around the ballroom. Their college friends were pretending to discuss the centerpieces. Julian’s cousins were whispering near the bar. At a table beside the dance floor, Eleanor lifted her champagne and listened to Richard with an expression of mild inconvenience.
“You got one anyway,” Natalie said.
“I know.”
“No. You got the scene you were trying to avoid. I got a different one.”
He lowered his head.
The bandleader approached Elise near the stage. Elise looked toward the head table, waiting for instructions about the first dance.
Natalie saw Julian notice.
“We can skip it,” he said.
She almost thanked him. The impulse embarrassed her.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re skipping it.”
He nodded.
“The speeches?”
“My father can give his.”
Peter set down his fork. “Only if you want me to.”
“I do.”
“And your father?” Natalie asked Julian.
Julian looked toward Richard.
“I don’t know.”
“Ask him.”
He hesitated.
There it was again: the pause in which Julian calculated what would be least disruptive.
Natalie had once mistaken that quality for kindness. He remembered birthdays, sent food when friends were sick, and could calm an angry hotel investor without raising his voice. When their upstairs neighbor’s pipes burst, Julian spent the night moving the woman’s books into their apartment and found a restoration company before sunrise.
But calm had another use. Calm could preserve a system exactly as it was.
“Ask him,” Natalie repeated.
Julian stood.
Richard listened to his son for less than a minute, then returned to his table. There would be no Ashford toast.
Peter gave the only speech.
He did not mention marriage as a safe harbor or promise that love conquered difficulty. He told a story about Natalie at nine years old refusing to leave a grocery store until an elderly man found the coupon he had dropped. The line behind them had complained. Natalie had crawled beneath two carts in her yellow raincoat and emerged holding the coupon above her head.
“She has always believed that small things tell you what larger things are made of,” Peter said.
Julian stared at the tablecloth.
Peter lifted his glass.
“To seeing clearly,” he said, “and to having the courage not to look away.”
The room drank.
May you like
Natalie did not.
Dinner continued. The cake was cut without ceremony. Guests danced after Elise quietly changed the order of events. Natalie spent an hour moving among them because each person had traveled, dressed, bought a gift, hired a sitter, or delayed something else to be there. She thanked Julian’s aunt for coming from Denver. She hugged her former roommate. She listened while a colleague told her the roses were spectacular.
