Chapter 6: The Reception
The reception was held in the garden of a restored farmhouse twenty minutes from the chapel.
String lights.
Round tables.
A band that knew how to read a room.
By seven o'clock the dance floor was full and the evening had the loose, generous feeling of a night going exactly as planned.
I had almost let myself believe it would stay that way.
Kevin and I had just finished our first dance when his aunt, Roberta, found me near the edge of the floor.
Roberta was Patricia's older sister — a retired schoolteacher from Vermont who had always been warmer to me than the rest of Kevin's family.
She touched my arm and leaned close.
"Can I steal you for just a moment?"
We stepped away from the band.
Roberta looked over her shoulder once, then back at me.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"And I need you to not react visibly, because Patricia is watching us right now."
I kept my expression neutral.
"Okay."
"The card in the garment bag.
I put it there."
I looked at her.
"I wrote it," Roberta said.
"I know about Diane because I was the one Patricia called when that relationship ended.
She was proud of herself.
She told me exactly what she'd done." Roberta's voice was steady but her hands weren't.
"I stayed quiet then.
I've regretted it for four years.
I wasn't going to stay quiet again."
"Why didn't you just tell me directly?"
"Because I wasn't sure you'd believe me over Kevin's version.
I wanted you to ask him yourself.
I wanted you to hear it from him." She paused.
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"Good." She exhaled.
"There's something else.
Something I didn't put in the card because I wasn't certain enough.
But I'm certain now."
"What?"
Roberta reached into her evening bag and took out her phone.
She turned it to face me.
It was a photograph.
A text conversation.
The name at the top of the screen was Patricia.
I read the messages.
The first was from two days before the wedding.
Patricia's message read: *She won't last.
Women like her never do.
I just need Kevin to see it for himself.
I've already taken care of the veil.
If that doesn't work, I have something else.*
The response, from a number with no name saved, said: *What's the something else?*
Patricia's reply: *I've been in contact with Diane.
She's agreed to come to the reception.*
My hands were very still.
"Diane is here?" I said.
"I don't know," Roberta said.
"I don't know if Patricia followed through.
But I thought you needed to know it was possible."
I looked across the garden.
Two hundred people.
Faces I knew, faces I didn't.
"Does Kevin know?"
"Not yet."
I found Kevin at the bar with his college roommate.
I touched his elbow and he turned immediately.
Something in my face made him excuse himself without being asked.
I showed him Roberta's phone.
He read the messages.
Once.
Twice.
"She contacted Diane," he said.
"That's what it says."
Kevin looked up and scanned the garden slowly.
May you like
His expression had gone very flat.
"I need to find my mother," he said.
