Chapter 6: The Email Read Aloud
The paper was slightly creased from being folded in my jacket.
I smoothed it once against my palm.
Rebecca took one step forward.
"Nathan.
Don't."
"The father is cooperative but conflict-averse," I read.
"I expect minimal resistance once the marriage is formalized."
A woman in the third row made a sound.
"I wrote that to manage expectations," Rebecca said quickly, turning slightly toward the guests as she spoke, including them, making them part of her audience.
"Wedding planning is stressful.
I was venting to a colleague.
That is all that was."
"It was written to Helen Voss," I said.
"The coordinator of the residential program where Emily's enrollment was already confirmed."
"Nathan—"
"It was written before Emily had spent a single night in our home."
Rebecca turned back to me.
The warmth was gone now.
What was underneath it was harder and more efficient.
"You are making a catastrophic mistake," she said quietly.
"In front of everyone you know."
"My daughter is in the front pew," I said.
"She's seven years old and she came to this wedding in a white dress she picked out herself.
She deserves to know her father saw the note."
Emily was sitting with Daniel, pressed against his side, watching me with wide eyes.
I looked at her for a moment.
She didn't look away.
I looked back at Rebecca.
"Is there anything you want to say?" I asked.
"To me or to this room?"
For a moment I thought she might actually do it.
Admit something.
Offer something real.
Instead she picked up her bouquet from the altar step.
"I want to say," she began, her voice lifting again for the room, "that I have spent two years loving a man who is not ready to be loved.
I have been patient.
I have been kind.
I have tried to build something with a child who needed more than either of us could give her, and I made a plan because someone had to." She paused.
"I'm sorry it ends this way.
I genuinely am."
She walked down the altar steps.
The guests parted as she moved up the aisle.
No one spoke.
A few people turned to watch her go.
Her heels were steady on the stone floor, her back straight, her bouquet held at her side like a prop she no longer needed.
At the chapel door she stopped.
She turned back once.
"You'll struggle without me," she said.
"Both of you will."
Then she walked out.
The door swung shut behind her.
The room was completely silent.
Then my aunt Patricia, who was seventy-one years old and had never once in my memory been at a loss for words, said from the fourth row: "Well.
Good riddance."
A sound moved through the chapel.
Not laughter exactly.
Something between relief and disbelief.
Daniel appeared at my side with Emily.
She looked up at me.
"Is the wedding over, Daddy?"
"Yes, sweetheart."
"Are you sad?"
I crouched down to her level.
The loose flowers were still in her fist.
I took them gently and tucked them back into her hair as best I could.
"No," I said.
"I'm not sad."
She studied my face with the focused seriousness that she had inherited from her mother.
"She's not coming back?"
"No."
Emily nodded slowly, processing it the way she processed most things — quietly, thoroughly, without rushing.
"Okay," she said.
Then: "Can we get lunch?
I'm really hungry."
Daniel made a sound behind me that he converted badly into a cough.
"Yes," I said.
"We can get lunch."
But as I stood and took Emily's hand and turned toward the guests who were already rising from their seats, my phone buzzed one more time.
A new message from Diane.
*There's something else you need to know.
About your daughter's medical records.
May you like
Call me tonight.
It's important.*
