Chapter 5: The Moment He Thought He Could Still Win
Fitch stepped out through the side door, phone pressed to his ear.
Julian watched him go.
Then he straightened his jacket, picked up his champagne glass, and set it back down without drinking.
"All right," he said.
He turned to face the room with the particular confidence of a man who had talked his way out of things before and believed he could do it again.
"I want to be honest with everyone here."
Nobody moved.
"What you're seeing is a coordinated attempt to disrupt this wedding by someone who has never accepted that our marriage ended.
These documents have been selectively gathered and presented in the most damaging possible light, on purpose, today, in front of our guests." He looked at me directly.
"And I think everyone here can see what that is."
A few heads turned toward me.
I didn't speak.
Noah did.
"The documents have dates on them," he said.
"And signatures.
They don't need a light."
A man near the front — one of Julian's partners from the firm — let out a short breath that wasn't quite a laugh.
Julian pivoted.
"My son has been manipulated.
He's ten years old, and someone has used him to carry documents he doesn't understand into a room to cause maximum damage on the most important day of my life.
That's what's actually happening here."
"Who manipulated me?" Noah asked.
Julian opened his mouth.
"Grandma's gone," Noah said.
"Ms.
Marsh just got here today.
Mom didn't know any of this until ten minutes ago.
So who manipulated me, Dad?"
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
Victoria stood up from her chair.
"I need some air," she said to no one in particular, and walked toward the glass doors that opened onto the terrace.
Julian took a step after her.
"Victoria—"
"Don't." She didn't turn around.
"Just — don't follow me right now."
He stopped.
The string quartet, who had been frozen near their instruments since Noah first took the microphone, now looked at each other with the specific uncertainty of people who are being paid by the hour and have no idea whether to keep being paid.
Julian turned back to the room.
His composure was still there, but it had the quality of something being held together by pressure rather than structure.
"I'm going to need everyone to give us some privacy," he said.
"This is a family matter and it will be resolved privately, the way it should have been from the beginning."
"The Texas State Bar doesn't resolve things privately," Diane said from the doorway.
"You need to leave," Julian said.
His voice had an edge now.
"You were not invited by me, and I'm asking you to leave."
"I was invited by Eleanor Vance.
Her invitation stands."
"Eleanor is de@d."
The word fell out of him harder than he intended.
He heard it himself — I could see that.
He pressed his lips together.
Diane didn't flinch.
"Yes," she said quietly.
"She is.
And she spent the last weeks of her life making sure that what she knew didn't go with her." She looked at Julian steadily.
"She loved you.
She said that, more than once.
She also said that loving you didn't mean protecting you from what you'd done."
Julian's jaw worked.
Then he looked at me — not with anger, not with the performance of aggrievement he'd been running since Noah walked to the microphone.
He looked at me with something that might, in a different man, have been the beginning of shame.
"I'll contest it," he said.
"Whatever she filed, whatever she gave to the Bar — I'll contest every piece of it.
I have the resources.
I have the firm behind me."
"Do you?" said a voice from the back.
The partner from the front table had stood up.
He was a tall man, silver-haired, with the unhurried manner of someone who had not needed to raise his voice in twenty years.
"Sit down, Richard," Julian said.
Richard did not sit down.
"Gerald just called me from the parking lot," he said.
"He's advising you not to make any further statements." He looked around the room once, briefly.
"I think that's sound advice."
Julian stared at him.
"We'll talk Monday," Richard said.
And sat back down.
The room had gone very still again.
Noah leaned close to me.
"Is it over?" he whispered.
I looked at Julian — at the way he was standing, shoulders back, chin up, still refusing to fold completely.
"Not yet," I said quietly.
"But it's starting."
Then Julian's phone buzzed on the table beside his champagne glass.
May you like
He looked down at the screen.
Whatever he read there made him sit down.
