Chapter 8: What Was Real
"Some of it," she said.
Daniel waited.
"The conversations we had at the engagement dinner.
When you talked about your grandmother's house — the one your parents sold when you were twelve.
The way you said you still drove past it sometimes." She paused.
"That was real.
I mean — my listening to it was real."
He looked at the floor.
"I thought you were just being polite."
"I wasn't."
He was quiet for a moment.
Around them, the last few guests were gathering their things, speaking in low voices, moving toward the exits with the careful energy of people who have witnessed something they haven't yet found words for.
Lydia was still in her chair.
She hadn't moved in several minutes.
She was looking at her bouquet.
"I didn't know," Daniel said.
"About any of it.
I want you to know that."
"I do know that."
"The property.
The other families.
Gerald Marsh." He shook his head.
"I grew up in that company.
I worked summers there from the time I was sixteen.
I never—" He stopped.
"I never looked."
"Most people don't look at things that are going well for them," Serena said.
It wasn't an accusation.
It was just true.
He seemed to hear it that way.
He nodded slowly.
"What happens now?" he asked.
"To the company."
"The injunction will hold while the civil case processes.
Your father's attorneys will try to negotiate.
Mine won't accept less than the full amount." She paused.
"There may be additional claimants.
The other families Gerald mentioned.
If they come forward, the total exposure increases."
"How much?"
"I don't know yet."
He absorbed this.
"And the journalists."
"The story runs tomorrow.
Patricia told me this morning."
"This morning." He looked at her.
"You knew this was all going to happen today.
You've known for months."
"Yes."
"And you still came to the rehearsal dinner.
You sat at our table.
You helped Lydia with her—" he stopped.
"Her veil."
The word landed between them.
"That was her mother's veil," Serena said quietly.
"Not mine.
I didn't touch it."
"I know." He ran a hand through his hair.
"I know.
I just—" He looked toward the head table, at the phone still lying there, at the three words still glowing on its screen.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with today."
"You don't have to know yet."
He looked at her.
"My mother asked me if you were a lawyer," she said.
"Your father asked me that."
"Right." She corrected herself.
"Your father."
"I am," he said.
"Corporate.
Mostly contracts." A short, humorless breath.
"Apparently I should have read more of them."
Serena almost smiled.
Not quite.
Lydia stood up from her chair.
She walked toward them slowly, still holding the bouquet, and she stopped beside Daniel and looked at Serena with an expression that had settled into something tired and honest.
"I should have told him," she said.
"When your father-in-law told me to watch you.
I should have told Daniel the same night."
"Yes," Serena said.
"You should have."
"I was afraid of what it would mean."
"I know."
Lydia looked at Daniel.
He was looking at the floor again.
"Daniel," she said.
"I know," he said.
"I know you were afraid."
"That's not an excuse."
"No," he agreed.
"It's not."
The three of them stood in the middle of the ballroom — the chandelier above them, the untouched cake behind them, the torn veil somewhere on the floor near the front — and none of them spoke for a moment.
Then Serena picked up the envelope from the table where she'd set it down.
"I'm going to go," she said.
"Where?" Daniel asked.
It came out before he could stop it.
She looked at him.
"I have a flight at seven," she said.
"I'm going home."
"Where's home?"
She thought about the question — the farmhouse on Carver Road, sold before she was ten.
The apartment she'd rented in this city for eleven months under a name that wasn't hers.
The house she'd bought three years ago in a town four hours away, with a porch that looked out over a field she didn't own but could see from her kitchen window.
"North," she said.
She walked toward the ballroom doors.
She was almost through them when Daniel said her name — her real name, the one she hadn't told him, the one he must have heard in the last hour and held onto.
"Serena."
She stopped.
Turned.
He was standing in the middle of the dance floor with his hands at his sides and his wedding jacket slightly crooked and the expression of someone who has lost several things in one afternoon and is only beginning to count them.
"I hope it helps," he said.
"Whatever you get from this.
I hope it actually helps."
She looked at him for a moment.
"It won't bring her back," she said.
May you like
"But it's not supposed to."
She walked out.
