Chapter 4: Everything He Said She'd Chosen
I don't remember walking back inside.
I remember the stone floor, and then the small side room off the main corridor, and then Diane's face when she saw mine.
Emma was sitting on a folding chair eating a bread roll someone had found for her.
She looked up when I came in.
She had white rose petals in her hair from the basket.
"Did Daddy get in trouble?" she asked.
"Not yet," I said.
I sat down beside her.
"Emma, I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth, okay?
You're not in trouble.
None of this is your fault."
She nodded, very serious.
"Do you remember your mother?
Your first mother?"
Something shifted in her face.
Not fear — more like the careful expression of someone who has been taught that a particular subject requires caution.
"Daddy says she went away," Emma said.
"I know that's what Daddy says.
But do you remember her?"
A long pause.
She pulled a petal from her hair and looked at it.
"She used to sing to me," Emma said quietly.
"At night.
I remember the song but not all the words."
My throat tightened.
Diane was standing near the door.
She caught my eye and gave the smallest shake of her head — meaning she hadn't known either, meaning none of us had known.
"Emma," I said carefully.
"The lady in the hallway.
Have you ever seen her before?"
Emma looked up.
"The one with the gray coat?"
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: "She looks like the picture."
"What picture?"
"The one Daddy keeps in the box.
The wooden box on his closet shelf.
He thinks I don't know about it but I've seen it." She said it matter-of-factly, the way children report things they have observed and filed away without fully understanding.
"It's a picture of a lady holding a baby.
Daddy looks happy in it."
Diane made a small sound.
I stood up.
I needed air.
I needed a wall to put my back against and thirty seconds to think.
I crossed to the window and looked out at the garden where the reception tables were already set — white linen, centerpieces, champagne glasses waiting in rows.
"Lauren." Diane came to stand beside me.
Her voice was very quiet.
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to know the truth," I said.
"All of it.
Not the version he prepared."
"Then you need to talk to her."
"I know."
"She's still outside.
I checked two minutes ago.
She hasn't left."
I turned from the window.
"Can you stay with Emma?"
"Of course."
"Don't let Ryan near her until I understand what's actually happening."
Diane nodded.
She didn't ask me if I was sure.
That was why she was my best friend.
Cassandra was sitting on a low stone bench in the garden entrance when I found her.
Her suitcase was between her feet.
She had her hands folded in her lap and she was looking at nothing in particular, the posture of someone who has been waiting a long time and has learned to do it without visible distress.
She looked up when she heard my heels on the path.
"I didn't plan this," she said immediately.
"I want you to know that.
I didn't come here to ruin your wedding."
"Then why did you come?"
"Because six months ago he stopped answering.
And the last time I spoke to him, he told me Emma was asking for me." She paused.
"He said if I didn't stop calling, he would make sure I never got access.
I didn't know what that meant legally.
I didn't know what he was capable of.
So I hired someone to find out where he was." She looked down at her hands.
"I didn't know about you until three days ago."
I sat down on the bench beside her.
My wedding dress spread out across the stone.
"He told me you chose to leave," I said.
"He told me you walked away from both of them when Emma was four.
That you stopped calling on your own."
Cassandra's expression didn't change dramatically.
Just a quiet, tired closing of the eyes.
"I left him," she said.
"I left him because he was controlling every part of my life — my money, my friends, where I could go.
But I never left Emma.
He took her.
He moved twice while the custody case was still open.
By the time I had a hearing date, she was in a different state and he had a lawyer telling the court I was unstable." She opened her eyes.
"I've been fighting for four years."
The champagne glasses caught the light on the reception tables.
Thirty of them, maybe more, standing in perfect rows.
"Do you have documentation?" I asked.
"Court records?
Anything?"
She reached into her coat and produced a folded envelope.
"I carry copies everywhere now." She held it out.
"I stopped trusting that things would stay where I put them."
I took the envelope.
I didn't open it yet.
"Why are you showing me this?" I said.
She looked at me directly for the first time since we'd sat down.
"Because you were about to marry him," she said.
"And because my daughter clearly trusts you.
And because someone in that building should know the truth before they make a decision they can't undo."
May you like
Inside the chapel, I could hear voices starting up again — the low murmur of a hundred guests who had come for a wedding and were now sitting in their seats with no idea what came next.
And somewhere in that building, Ryan was deciding what story to tell.
