Chapter 4 - Every Call She Made
Ethan didn't look at me right away. He sat with his elbows on his knees, turning his phone over and over in his hands, the thing he does when he's already decided to say something and is just lining up the words.
"The morning after that dinner," he said. "The night you told her the salmon was good. She called me. Early. Before you were awake."
"Saying what?"
"That she'd been up thinking. That she wasn't trying to be cruel, she just wanted me to see the — the 'whole picture.' Her phrase." He set the phone down. "She said she'd talked to somebody. A wedding planner she knows from somewhere. Asked her professional opinion."
I waited.
"And the planner agreed with her. Supposedly. She said a professional had confirmed that putting Toby in the formal aisle shots would create —" he made himself say it — "'visual inconsistency.'"
"Visual inconsistency."
"That's the phrase she used."
I stood up. Walked to the window. The street outside was dark and ordinary and completely unaware of what was going on in our bedroom.
"She was building a case," I said.
"Yeah."
"She went out and found someone to agree with her so she could come back to you with a witness."
"Yeah." His voice held steady but his hands didn't. "I told her it wasn't up for discussion. Toby was walking you, end of conversation, and I didn't want to hear about it again. She said she understood." He paused. "Then she called Susan."
I turned around. "How long have you known about the Susan call?"
"Since last night. She texted me after she got home from your parents'. She wanted me to know before today. In case it came up. She wanted me ready."
"Susan covered for us."
"Susan has always been decent." He looked up. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the morning call sooner. I thought I'd shut it down. I thought she'd dropped it."
"She didn't drop it."
"No."
I came back and sat beside him — not because I was done being angry, but because the anger wasn't pointed at him and I needed him to feel that.
"Is there more?" I asked. "Anything else she did that you haven't told me?"
He was quiet a beat too long.
"Ethan."
"She asked my father to talk to you. Directly. He refused. That's why he barely said a word at that dinner — he'd already told her no, and they'd had a fight about it. He told me this morning, in the car."
Gerald. Quiet Gerald, who'd said don't call it simple and meant every letter of it. Who'd turned her down before I even knew there was something to turn down.
"Your father's a good man," I said.
"He is." Ethan nodded slowly. "He told me he was ashamed of her. That word. He said, 'I want you to hear it from me — I'm ashamed of what she tried to do.'"
I didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "She's going to act like today never happened. Tomorrow, the day after — she'll call, she'll be completely pleasant, and she'll expect the whole thing to reset."
"Probably."
"I'm not letting it reset."
He looked at me. "Meaning what?"
"Meaning I'm going to talk to her. Just her and me. Not at a dinner table, not with an audience she can perform for." I held his eyes. "She needs to hear it with nobody else in the room."
"Are you sure that's —"
"I practiced," I said.
He looked at me for a second, and something crossed his face — grief and love and a worn-out kind of pride, all at the same time.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay."
But two days later, before I could set anything up, Margaret called me first.
Her voice on the phone was smooth and warm, like the dinner had been a small misreading between people who simply cared a little too much.
"I thought we could have lunch," she said. "Just us. Clear the air."
May you like
I said yes.
I said yes because I wanted to be looking straight at her when I told her what I had to say. And because I wanted to see, with nothing in the way, exactly who she was when she thought she had the upper hand.
