Chapter 5: Standing at the Back of the Room
I stood at the back of the ceremony room and watched my son.
He was standing at the front beside Ryan, both of them facing the officiant.
The room was full — maybe sixty people, soft lighting, white flowers along the ends of the chairs.
Everything my son had wanted.
Everything I had helped him plan.
Ryan was smiling.
That careful smile.
My son was smiling too, but his was different.
His was open.
Unguarded.
The smile of someone who had no idea.
I had the envelope in my hand.
The folded paper pressed against my palm.
A woman near me leaned over to her husband and whispered something.
He nodded.
They were watching the front of the room, happy, present, unbothered.
I thought about what my ex-husband had said.
Whatever Ryan's original motivation, that part appears to be genuine.
I thought about what I had heard in the restroom.
He still doesn't know anything.
Just get through the ceremony.
Once it's legal, we move forward.
Those two things did not fit together cleanly.
They pulled in opposite directions.
And I didn't know which one was the truth.
The officiant began to speak.
I felt someone step up beside me.
I turned.
It was a woman I didn't recognize.
Mid-forties, dark coat, standing slightly apart from the other guests at the back.
She wasn't watching the ceremony.
She was watching me.
"You're his mother," she said quietly.
Not a question.
"Yes."
"I thought so." She kept her voice low.
"My name is Patricia.
I'm a paralegal.
I work for the firm on that letterhead." She nodded toward the envelope in my hand.
I looked down at it, then back at her.
"You work for my ex-husband's attorney."
"I did." She paused.
"Until three weeks ago."
Something in the way she said it made me go still.
"Why are you here?"
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a folded set of papers, thicker than the single sheet I was holding.
She held them out to me.
"Because the document he gave you," she said, "is not the only document."
At the front of the room, the officiant asked if anyone knew of any reason the ceremony should not proceed.
May you like
The room was silent.
Patricia's papers were in my hand.
