Chương 5
“She wrote instructions.”
“She wanted a limited set of photographs before the ceremony. Brooke mishandled the children, the venue failed to supervise them, and your son interpreted an adult conversation in the worst possible way.”
Daniel’s hand tightened on the door.
The attorney spoke gently. “Mr. Mercer, no one is trying to minimize the children’s distress.”
“You just did.”
“I’m trying to prevent an already painful situation from becoming destructive.”
A car slowed at the curb. The driver held up a phone.
Judith noticed and stepped closer to the house.
“May we come inside?”
“No.”
Her face hardened. “Claire has lived here for almost two years.”
“And today she is staying at a hotel.”
“You cannot erase her life overnight.”
Daniel thought of the handwritten note on the kitchen counter, flattened beneath a glass baking dish so the paper would not curl.
“No,” he said. “Apparently that takes longer.”
Judith’s gaze flicked past him. Ethan stood halfway down the hall.
“Ethan,” she called. “Sweetheart, this was a misunderstanding.”
Daniel closed the door.
Judith knocked once, sharply.
Then she rang the bell three times.
Lily covered her ears.
Daniel called Claire. She answered immediately but said nothing.
“Your mother is here,” he told her. “Text me what you need. I’ll pack a bag and place it outside.”
“Daniel—”
“You don’t get to come in today.”
“I need to see you.”
“The children are here.”
“I need to apologize to them.”
“They do not need to receive anything from you right now.”
A breath moved through the phone. “You’re making decisions while you’re furious.”
“I made decisions while I was in love. Those seem to be the ones we should question.”
“Please don’t talk like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like everything was false.”
He looked at Ethan. His son disappeared up the stairs.
“I don’t know what was false yet.”
Claire began to cry then, quietly and without the breathless sounds she made in movies. Daniel had seen her cry only twice before: when her father died and when Daniel proposed. Hearing it now pulled at an old reflex. He wanted to lower his voice, explain, make room for context.
He hated that part of himself.
“Text me the medication,” he said, and ended the call.
Claire needed thyroid pills from the bathroom cabinet, two dresses, work clothes, and a charger. Daniel packed them into a suitcase while Nora stood in the doorway.
“You don’t have to supervise me,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You’re leaning there with your arms crossed.”
“I do that in doorways.”
He opened Claire’s top dresser drawer. Silk scarves, arranged by color, lay beside a velvet jewelry case. Her wedding ring was still on her hand, wherever she was. The matching band Daniel had left at Waverly Hall belonged to him, though the thought of retrieving it made his stomach tighten.
Under the scarves was a white envelope marked PHOTO ORDER—FINAL.
Daniel stopped.
Nora straightened.
He opened it.
The list contained forty-two numbered groupings. Claire with her mother. Claire with the Hart women. Claire with college friends. Claire and Daniel with each table. Daniel with his partners. Daniel with Nora.
Ethan and Lily appeared in three lines near the bottom.
Daniel + children, optional if time.
Children with couple, one frame.
Bride with children, candid only.
A handwritten note ran along the margin.
Do not use for formal album unless everyone looks composed.
The handwriting was Claire’s.
Nora read over his shoulder.
“Maybe she meant all of you,” she said, though her voice suggested she did not believe it.
“She wrote ‘everyone.’”
“Daniel.”
He folded the paper back along its crease.
“Don’t make it worse than it is,” Nora said.
He looked at her sharply.
“That’s not a defense of Claire. It’s a warning to you. You’re going to find a hundred things that look different today. Some of them will be different. Some will just be table assignments and bad wording.”
“She marked my children optional.”
“Yes.”
“They weren’t optional.”
“I know.”
He placed the list inside the suitcase, then removed it.
“No,” Nora said. “Keep it.”
“It belongs to her.”
“The copy may matter.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s the point.”
Daniel took photographs of each page and returned the original to the envelope. He hated the furtive feeling of it, as though he were searching a stranger’s drawers instead of packing the belongings of the woman who had slept beside him the previous night.
He placed the suitcase on the porch.
Judith took it without speaking.
The attorney handed Daniel a business card.
“We should discuss the venue contracts, gifts, public statements, and property access before either side acts impulsively.”
“My side has two children eating breakfast.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
The attorney held Daniel’s gaze. “Probably not. But I understand that strangers are identifying their school online. That is a problem we may share.”
Daniel looked toward the street.
The car with the raised phone had parked at the corner.
For the first time, the attorney sounded useful.
By noon, the school principal called. The administration had removed the children’s names from the online directory and asked parents not to discuss the video on campus. Two reporters had already emailed the office.
“You may want to keep Ethan and Lily home Monday,” the principal said.
“So they lose school because an adult humiliated them?”
“I’m thinking about their comfort.”
“Ask them what they want.”
A pause followed.
“You’re right,” the principal said. “I should have said we can support whichever choice feels safest.”
Daniel apologized for his tone. The principal accepted without pretending it had not been rude.
Ethan wanted to go to school.
“I’m not hiding,” he said.
“You wouldn’t be hiding.”
“What would I be doing?”
“Taking a day.”
“That’s hiding with pajamas.”
May you like
Daniel sat on the edge of Ethan’s bed. Model airplanes hung from clear thread above them. Claire had called the room cluttered, then caught herself and said “active.” Daniel had laughed.
“People might say things,” he told him.
