Part 3
Nothing came out at first.
Celeste’s eyes lowered to the child’s hands around his waist.
Then to the small rose-colored shoe on the floor.
Then back to Mason.
“Who is she?” she asked.
Wren pressed closer against him.
Mason swallowed.
“She says her name is Wren.”
Celeste waited.
He could see the question she did not ask.
He could see the answer she was afraid he would give.
“She called me Dad,” he said.
Celeste’s face changed.
The shock did not disappear. It moved deeper.
For a long moment, the only sound in the corridor was Wren’s uneven breathing and the faint music that had not yet fully stopped in the courtyard.
Then Celeste looked at the child.
“Hi, Wren,” she said quietly.
Wren did not answer.
Celeste did not move closer.
Mason noticed that immediately. She kept her distance as though the child’s fear had made a line on the floor that should not be crossed.
“I’m Celeste,” she said.
Wren turned her face slightly from Mason’s shirt and looked at her.
The girl’s eyes were red.
“She said you were the lady in white,” Wren whispered.
Celeste went still.
Mason felt the child tense.
“What did she say about Celeste?” he asked carefully.
Wren looked down.
“She said not to let her take me.”
The sentence landed in the corridor with a force none of them could answer quickly.
Celeste’s fingers tightened around the fabric at her waist.
“I didn’t put her in here,” she said.
Mason looked at her.
“I know.”
But he did not know.
Not completely.
He knew Celeste well enough to believe she would not lock a child in a room. He knew the carefulness in her voice, the way she did not reach forward or crowd Wren, the way her face had gone pale when she heard what the girl had been told.
Yet the white sleeves.
The wedding.
The hidden child appearing on the exact evening Celeste was meant to marry him.
The coincidence was too deliberate to be coincidence.
Celeste looked at Mason as if she could see the thought moving behind his eyes.
“You don’t know,” she said.
He said nothing.
Her mouth tightened.
“No,” she repeated. “You don’t know. Not yet.”
The words were not angry.
That made them hurt more.
Wren lifted her head.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
Celeste blinked once.
“No.”
“Because Daddy was going to marry you.”
Celeste looked toward the courtyard.
The flowers were visible through the corridor arch, pale in the gold evening. The guests had started rising from their chairs, some looking away quickly when they realized they had been caught watching.
“I don’t know what is happening,” Celeste said.
Wren’s face crumpled again.
“But I am not mad at you.”
Mason felt the girl’s fingers tighten in his shirt.
He wanted to tell Celeste he was sorry.
He wanted to tell her he had not known.
He wanted to tell her that every fear she had ever expressed about his unfinished past had been wrong only in the ways that mattered most.
Instead, he held Wren closer.
“Can you tell me where your mother is?” he asked.
The girl shook her head.
“She said she would come after the words.”
“What words?”
“The wedding words.”
Mason looked toward the floral arch.
The ceremony had become a paused photograph: the officiant still standing in place, the musicians lowering their instruments, guests gathered in a loose uneasy quiet beneath the string lights.
A wedding could survive rain. It could survive a forgotten ring, a missed cue, a broken heel, a speech that went too long. It could even survive private grief, if everyone agreed to keep it private.
It could not survive a seven-year-old girl calling the groom Dad from behind a locked door.
Celeste turned away from them for one second.
Mason saw her breathe in.
Then out.
When she faced him again, her composure had returned, though it no longer looked effortless.
“We need to get her somewhere calmer,” she said.
Wren shook her head immediately.
“No.”
Celeste paused.
“You can stay with Mason,” she said. “No one will take you from him.”
The child stared at her as if she was trying to decide whether adults meant anything when they made promises.
Mason looked at Celeste.
May you like
There were a hundred things he needed to say. None of them could be said while Wren held him as though letting go might send her back behind the locked door.
The estate manager, Mrs. Vann, appeared at the far end of the corridor. Her silver hair was pinned neatly beneath a small black hat. She had managed the property for more than twenty years and had seen family arguments, engagements, business retreats, funerals, and one disastrous New Year’s party where a senator’s son had fallen into the fountain.
