Chapter 3: What the Envelopes Contained
Nick's father's name was Robert.
He was sixty-one years old.
He had driven four hours to be there.
He was wearing a dark blue suit that looked like he had bought it specifically for this occasion, and he was holding his hat in both hands like a man who had rehearsed what to do with them.
Nick introduced us quietly, away from the microphone.
"This is my wife," Nick said.
"Her name is Claire."
Robert took my hand in both of his.
His eyes were red at the edges.
"I'm sorry about your hair," he said.
"I'm sorry about all of it."
I didn't know what to say.
I just nodded.
Martha had not gone far.
She was standing near the exit, her back against the wall, watching.
Two of her friends had followed her out and were whispering to her.
She shook them off.
Nick walked toward her.
I followed, because I was not going to stand alone in the middle of my own wedding reception with cropped hair and no explanation.
"Nick." Martha's voice had shifted.
The laughing was gone.
"This is not the place."
"You made it the place," Nick said.
"The moment you picked up those scissors, you made it the place."
"I want to talk about this privately—"
"There's nothing private about what you did to Claire.
Every person in this room saw it."
Martha looked past him at me.
Something moved across her face.
Not regret.
Something harder than that.
"I did what I thought was right," she said.
"Which part?" Nick asked.
"Cutting my wife's hair on our wedding day?
Or hiding my father from me for eleven years?"
She said nothing.
Nick reached back into his jacket.
He pulled out one of the envelopes and held it so she could see the front.
Her handwriting.
Her address.
Opened and resealed with tape that had yellowed at the edges.
"This one is from when I was sixteen," he said.
"Dad wrote to tell me he was coming to my school play.
He had a ticket.
He drove four hours.
You called the school and told them he was a danger.
They turned him away at the door."
Martha's chin lifted slightly.
"He was unstable.
I was protecting—"
"Stop saying that word."
It was the first time I had ever heard Nick's voice crack.
He pressed his lips together.
Steadied himself.
"He has never been unstable.
There is no record.
No incident.
Nothing.
You invented it because you didn't want him near me.
And I spent sixteen years thinking my father didn't care whether I was alive."
Robert had walked up behind Nick.
He put one hand on his son's shoulder and left it there.
Martha looked at that hand.
Her jaw tightened.
"You don't know everything," she said.
"There are things about your father you don't know."
"Then tell me," Nick said.
"Right now.
Tell me."
She looked around at the guests who had drifted closer.
At the faces turned toward her.
She closed her mouth.
"That's what I thought," Nick said.
He turned back toward the room.
Robert walked beside him.
I fell into step on Nick's other side, and we walked back to the center of the reception together.
Behind us, I heard Martha say something to her friend.
Low and sharp.
I didn't catch all of it.
But I heard the name she said at the end.
May you like
It wasn't Nick's name.
It was mine.
