Chương 3
“It wasn’t seventy.”
Claire’s expression turned incredulous.
He immediately hated himself for saying it.
“Seriously?”
“No. Sorry.”
“How much?”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“Forty-eight.”
A few guests nearby pretended not to listen.
Claire closed her eyes.
“Forty-eight thousand dollars.”
“She donated through the foundation.”
“To our wedding.”
“Yes.”
“And you lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He could have told her the flattering version.
Because she had been stressed.
Because her father’s business had suffered.
Because the rooftop deposit was nonrefundable.
Because Daniel loved her and wanted to give her the wedding she had planned for eighteen months.
All were true.
None were the whole truth.
“Because I knew you’d say no.”
Claire’s eyes opened.
There it was.
The answer beneath the answer.
Daniel had decided for her.
Not the first time.
She took one step back.
Margaret said quietly, “That part is not his fault.”
Claire looked at her.
“Please don’t defend him.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve known him nine months.”
Margaret’s face tightened.
“Longer than that, in one sense.”
Claire immediately looked ashamed.
Margaret noticed.
Neither woman apologized.
Richard moved closer.
“Can we please go downstairs?”
Daniel laughed.
This time there was no humor in it.
“Why? Better acoustics for lying?”
“Enough.”
Richard’s command came automatically.
Daniel felt something inside him harden.
“No.”
His father stared.
Daniel had spent his childhood obeying that tone. His adolescence challenging it strategically. His adulthood pretending it no longer mattered.
Now, at thirty-four, wearing a tuxedo his father had complained cost too much despite offering to pay for it, Daniel finally heard the tone for what it was.
Fear disguised as authority.
“No,” Daniel repeated. “You don’t get to move this somewhere private because you’re embarrassed.”
Richard’s jaw shifted.
“I’m thinking about you.”
“For thirty years?”
Margaret looked away.
That did something to Daniel.
He turned to her.
“Where were you?”
The question arrived harsher than he intended.
Margaret absorbed it.
“Daniel—” Claire began.
He lifted a hand without looking at her.
“Where were you?”
Margaret’s voice was steady, but he heard effort beneath it.
“In Detroit at first. Then Columbus. Then Boston. New York for the last eleven years.”
“You’ve been in New York eleven years?”
“Yes.”
“Forty minutes from me?”
“Sometimes less.”
“And you never came.”
Richard said, “There were reasons.”
Daniel rounded on him.
“I’m not talking to you.”
Margaret’s eyes closed briefly.
“When you were born, I was twenty-nine. Your father and I were not married. He was.”
Daniel looked at Richard.
Richard looked toward the skyline.
“Susan?”
“Yes,” Margaret said.
Daniel swallowed.
The woman he had called Mom until she died when he was eight.
Susan Mercer, who smelled like hand cream and coffee. Susan, who taught him to tie his shoes by making rabbit ears. Susan, who once sat with him on a bathroom floor for three hours because he had eaten a bad hot dog at Coney Island and was terrified he would die.
He looked at Margaret.
“Did she know?”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more than he expected.
“How?”
“She couldn’t have children. Richard and I had been seeing each other before I knew he was married.”
Richard said, “Margaret.”
She ignored him.
“When I found out, I left him. Then I found out I was pregnant.”
Daniel stared at his father.
“You told her you were single.”
Richard’s silence answered.
Claire whispered, “Jesus.”
Richard rubbed his mouth.
“I was separated.”
Margaret looked at him.
“You spent Christmas morning with your wife.”
“We were functionally separated.”
“You sent me a photograph of a hotel conference room and told me you were in Cleveland.”
Richard’s face reddened.
A strange, inappropriate sound escaped one of Daniel’s college friends. He disguised it as a cough.
Under any other circumstances Daniel might have appreciated the absurdity.
He did not.
Margaret continued.
“When Susan learned about the pregnancy, she contacted me herself.”
Daniel tried to imagine his mother—Susan—calling the woman carrying her husband’s child.
He couldn’t.
“What did she want?”
Margaret looked down at the broken glass.
“A chance to raise you.”
Claire shook her head slowly.
“No.”
Daniel’s voice came out almost too quietly.
“You gave me away?”
Margaret looked up.
There it was.
The wound.
Not tears. Not collapse.
Something worse.
“Yes.”
Daniel walked away from her.
Only several steps.
The glass wall stopped him.
Beyond it, the city was turning blue.
He put both hands on the rail.
Nobody followed immediately.
That was the first kindness anyone gave him.
He watched headlights move below.
He became aware of ridiculous things.
His left shoe hurt.
He had forgotten to eat lunch.
Someone’s perfume smelled like vanilla.
The floral arch had a loose white ribbon that kept lifting in the wind and dropping again.
He had been married to the idea of this evening for so long that his mind kept trying to restore the schedule.
Cocktails.
Dinner.
Toasts.
Cake.
First dance.
At nine forty-five, the photographer had planned to take Claire and Daniel to the southeast corner for skyline portraits.
At ten thirty, buses would take guests back to the hotel.
His brain kept offering these useless facts as if the correct sequence might save him.
Claire approached carefully.
She did not touch him.
“Daniel.”
He stared down at the traffic.
“What did she tell you?”
Claire’s voice tightened.
“What?”
“When you slapped her. What did you think happened?”
Claire glanced toward Margaret.
“She called me this afternoon.”
Daniel turned.
“Margaret called you?”
“No. A woman called me from a blocked number. She said Margaret had paid you to disappear before the ceremony. She knew the amount. She knew about the foundation transfer. She knew you’d met Margaret privately.”
Daniel frowned.
“I met her twice.”
“You told me once.”
He looked away.
Claire laughed softly, bitterly.
“Great.”
“Who called you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What exactly did she say?”
May you like
Claire’s face changed as she tried to remember.
“She said, ‘Ask Daniel why Margaret Hale paid forty-eight thousand dollars three weeks before your wedding, and ask him what he promised her in return.’”
