Chương 6
Claire slid the accounting sheet back to Daniel.
“Tell them the wedding is canceled.”
“And when they ask why?”
“Tell them to ask Ethan.”
Ethan looked at her.
Margaret stood.
“This family has treated you like a daughter.”
Claire’s composure cracked then.
Not loudly.
She laughed.
Margaret recoiled as if struck.
Claire pressed her fingers to her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“You find that funny?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Claire lowered her hand.
“I was just trying to remember the last time my mother made me pay to be her daughter.”
Rachel looked down.
Their mother had been dead twelve years.
Claire regretted the sentence immediately.
It was too sharp.
Too clean.
Exactly the kind of line she disliked in other people.
Margaret’s face changed.
For a second she looked older than fifty-eight.
Then anger returned and protected her.
“That is beneath you.”
“Yes,” Claire said. “It was.”
Margaret seemed almost more offended by the agreement.
Claire stood.
“I’m leaving.”
Daniel asked, “Should I proceed with all preventable cancellations?”
“Yes.”
“And the ballroom itself?”
“Cancel it.”
Ethan looked up.
Claire continued before he could speak.
“If Margaret wants to assume the contract and hold a party tomorrow, she can discuss that with you.”
Margaret’s face went blank.
Claire picked up the engagement ring.
For one strange second, everyone thought she might put it back on.
She held it toward Ethan.
He did not take it.
“Please.”
He looked at the ring.
Then at her.
“I bought that for you.”
“It doesn’t belong to me anymore.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Neither do I.”
Rachel sighed.
“Put it in an envelope. Solve jewelry custody later.”
Daniel quietly opened a drawer and removed a small hotel envelope.
Ethan almost smiled.
It vanished before it formed.
Claire dropped the ring inside.
Daniel sealed it and wrote both their names across the front.
The bureaucracy of heartbreak.
Claire found it oddly merciful.
They left the hotel through a side entrance because the lobby had filled with relatives.
Rachel carried the garment bag.
Claire carried nothing.
Her overnight suitcase was upstairs in the bridal suite, but she could not make herself go get it.
“You can borrow clothes,” Rachel said.
Claire looked at her sister’s five-foot-three frame.
“I’m seven inches taller than you.”
“You can borrow very short clothes.”
Claire smiled despite herself.
Outside, the August air wrapped around them, hot and damp after the hotel’s air-conditioning.
Cars moved along the avenue.
A man walked a tiny white dog past them.
Two women in matching blue dresses hurried toward the entrance, laughing at something on a phone.
Life had the indecency to continue.
Rachel unlocked her car.
“Your place or mine?”
Claire hesitated.
Her townhouse was also Ethan’s home now.
His suits were in her closet. His running shoes sat by the back door. Half the kitchen cabinets contained protein powder, supplements, and three different kinds of coffee equipment he insisted were necessary.
“Yours.”
Rachel nodded.
They drove ten minutes before either spoke.
At a red light Rachel said, “I’m going to ask one question, and then I’m not going to ask anything else unless you want me to.”
Claire watched the pedestrian countdown.
“Nine seconds. Go.”
“How long have things been bad?”
Claire looked at her.
Rachel kept her eyes on the road.
“I don’t know.”
“That bad?”
“No. That normal.”
The light changed.
Rachel drove.
Claire looked out the window.
“He’s been distant.”
“For how long?”
“You said one question.”
“I lied.”
“Three months. Maybe four.”
“Since when?”
“Since wedding planning got intense.”
Rachel made a face.
“That’s not an answer.”
Claire knew.
She leaned her head against the window.
They passed a grocery store, a tire shop, a bus stop where a man in scrubs was eating from a paper bag.
“I kept thinking we were tired.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you happy?”
Claire closed her eyes.
Rachel said, “Sorry.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to answer.”
“I was happy sometimes.”
“That counts.”
“It doesn’t feel like enough now.”
Rachel drummed her thumb against the steering wheel.
“Maybe it was enough then.”
Claire turned to her.
Rachel shrugged.
“I’m trying not to rewrite your entire relationship because he behaved like a coward at the end.”
“You hate him.”
“I hate him tonight.”
“That sounds temporary.”
“It’s only 8:47.”
At Rachel’s apartment, Claire stood in the bathroom for a long time looking at herself.
Her ivory rehearsal dress was wrinkled at the waist.
One earring was missing.
She had no idea when she lost it.
She removed the necklace Ethan had given her for her birthday and placed it beside the sink.
Then she picked it up again.
It was hers.
Not everything had to become evidence.
Rachel knocked.
“I left a T-shirt outside.”
“Thanks.”
“And sweatpants.”
“Your sweatpants hit me mid-calf.”
“They’re fashion now.”
Claire changed.
The wedding party group chat reached eighty-three unread messages.
She muted it.
Then she sat on Rachel’s couch and opened her banking app.
Rachel came in carrying two mugs of tea.
“No.”
Claire looked up.
“No what?”
“No spreadsheets.”
“I’m checking pending charges.”
“You found out your fiancé planned to leave you after a wedding you paid for less than two hours ago.”
“Exactly.”
Rachel set the mugs down.
“That is not an argument for accounting.”
“It is to me.”
Rachel sat beside her.
Claire reviewed the charges.
Hotel.
Florist.
Band.
Transportation company.
She began making a list.
Rachel watched.
After a minute she said, “Do you want me to take the phone away?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to hold the phone while you make the list?”
Claire handed it over.
That was how they spent the first night of what should have been Claire’s wedding weekend.
Not crying.
Not drinking.
Reading cancellation policies.
At 10:13, Ethan called.
Claire watched his name appear.
She let it ring.
At 10:18, he called again.
At 10:41, he texted.
I’m staying at the hotel tonight. I won’t go to the house unless you tell me I can.
May you like
Claire read it twice.
Rachel glanced at her.
