Chapter 5: Two Years
I didn't sleep well that night.
I lay in the dark and turned Claire's words over the way you turn a stone that looks wrong — not sure what you expect to find underneath, but certain something is there.
*I've been planning this for two years.*
People say things on the phone when they're upset that they don't mean literally.
I knew that.
But the word *planning* sat differently than *hoping* or *working toward* or even *waiting for*.
Planning implied a shape.
A sequence.
Steps taken in a specific order toward a specific end.
What end?
In the morning I called Emmett.
He answered on the second ring, which told me he hadn't slept well either.
"How are you?" I asked.
"Honestly?
I don't know yet." A pause.
"She apologized this morning.
Said she was overwhelmed by the day and handled it badly."
"Did you believe her?"
A longer pause.
"I wanted to."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," he said.
"It's not."
I told him what I had heard in the corridor.
I told him exactly, word for word, because Emmett deserved the exact words and not my interpretation of them.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"She said she'd been planning for two years."
"That's what she said."
"We've only been together for two years."
"I know."
Another silence.
Then: "What does that mean?"
"I don't know," I said.
"But I think you should find out."
He came over that afternoon.
We sat at my kitchen table the way we had sat many times before — after Phoebe's funeral, after the first hard year, after the nights when Margot had a fever and he didn't know what to do and just needed somewhere to sit with another person who loved her.
He wrapped his hands around a mug of tea and stared at the table.
"She's been good with Margot," he said.
"Mostly.
There were a few things I brushed off.
Small things."
"What kind of things?"
"She'd suggest I drop Margot at your place more.
Said it was good for her to have time with you, which — I mean, it is, so I didn't think much of it." He paused.
"She'd ask about Phoebe's life insurance.
Said she was trying to understand our finances.
I told her everything was in trust for Margot."
I set down my mug.
"She asked about the trust?"
"A few times.
I thought she was just being thorough." He looked up.
"She's an organized person.
I thought that was a good thing."
"When did she first ask about it?"
He thought.
"Maybe three months in.
We'd only just started talking about being serious."
Three months in.
Eighteen months before the proposal.
Two years of planning.
I didn't say what I was thinking.
Not yet.
Because I could be wrong, and Emmett was sitting at my table on the morning after his wedding, and I was not going to hand him a conclusion he hadn't reached himself.
"Have you spoken to Gary?" I asked.
"Not yet.
Why?"
"He's known you a long time.
He was watching last night.
I think he saw things."
Emmett nodded slowly.
He pulled out his phone and typed a message.
A minute later his phone buzzed.
He read the reply.
His face didn't change exactly, but something behind his eyes did.
"Gary says he needs to show me something." He stood up.
"He's been sitting on it.
Didn't want to say anything before the wedding."
"Go," I said.
He was already reaching for his jacket.
At the door he stopped.
"Dad." He only called me that on the days that mattered.
"Whatever this turns out to be — thank you.
For last night.
For Margot."
"She's my whole world," I said.
"You both are."
He nodded.
Then he was gone.
I washed the mugs and stood at the kitchen window looking out at the garden.
Phoebe had planted the rose bush along the back fence the summer before she d*ed.
It still came back every year, stubborn and bright.
I thought about a woman who had spent two years planning something she hadn't named out loud.
I thought about a little girl carrying a photograph in her backpack.
I thought about what Gary had been sitting on — and why he had chosen not to say it before the wedding.
That last part was the one I couldn't let go of.
If Gary knew something worth knowing, and he'd held it back to avoid ruining the wedding — then whatever it was, it was serious enough that he'd weighed it against a marriage and decided the marriage should happen first.
That was not a small thing.
May you like
That was someone who had decided the truth could wait.
And the truth, in my experience, never waited as long as you hoped.
