Chapter 9: What Remained
Six weeks later, the Harbor Crown Hotel took down the reservation under the Marston name.
Emma knew this because the events coordinator called her personally to confirm the cancellation and ask, with careful professional delicacy, whether any deposits should be returned to the Bennett account or the Marston account.
Emma said the Bennett account.
The coordinator said of course, and Emma could hear in her voice that she had read the financial news and understood what she was really asking.
The wedding welcome bags were still in Emma's storage unit.
She hadn't been able to deal with them yet.
Every few days she thought about it and then thought about something else.
Tessa was staying in a sublet on the north side of the city.
They spoke on the phone twice a week.
The conversations were short and careful and honest in a way their conversations had never quite been before — as though the wreckage had cleared away a layer of performance that had been there so long neither of them had noticed it.
"I keep thinking about the bridal shower," Tessa said one evening.
"I planned it so carefully.
I wanted it to be perfect."
"It was perfect," Emma said.
"Emma—"
"It was.
I had a wonderful afternoon." She paused.
"That's the thing about it.
The good parts were real.
They don't stop being real because of what else was happening."
Tessa was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know how to do this," she said.
"Come back from it.
With you."
"Neither do I," Emma said.
"I think we just keep calling."
---
Diane Forsythe had lunch with Emma on a Thursday in December, at a small restaurant near the hospital.
She brought a folder of documents she no longer needed — copies she'd kept for fourteen months as insurance — and slid them across the table.
"Burn them or keep them," she said.
"I don't need them anymore."
"What will you do now?" Emma asked.
"I've had three calls from firms in Boston since Cole's name appeared in the news." She smiled, small and dry.
"It turns out being the person who caught the fraud is a better credential than being the person who was removed for flagging it."
"Good," Emma said.
"I'm sorry I didn't come to you directly," Diane said.
"I went to Adrian because I thought he could act faster.
I didn't think about what it cost you to find out the way you did."
"You gave me the letter with my name on it," Emma said.
"You made sure I was in it."
"That's not the same as telling you yourself."
"No," Emma agreed.
"But it was something."
---
Adrian called on a Friday evening in late December.
Not about Cole.
Not about the case.
The legal process had moved into a phase that no longer required Emma's involvement, and they both knew it.
"There's a restaurant on the east harbor," he said.
"It opened in October.
I've been meaning to go and haven't found the right occasion."
Emma was standing in her kitchen.
She had been about to make dinner for one.
"Is this you asking me to dinner?" she said.
"Yes," he said.
"It is."
She looked at the single pot on the stove.
The one portion of pasta she'd been about to measure out.
"What time?" she said.
"Seven-thirty, if that works."
"It works."
She put the pot away.
---
The restaurant was warm and low-lit, with windows that looked out over the east harbor and the lights of the ferry terminal.
They talked for three hours.
Not about Cole, not about the case, not about the Marston Group or the Delaware company or the documents that had changed everything.
They talked about the hospital.
About a boy who had been building towers out of blocks and had, Emma reported, achieved a structure of considerable height before it finally fell.
About the shipping routes Adrian had memorized as a child because his father had made him learn them.
About Port Mercy in summer, which Adrian said was the only time the city made sense.
About the fact that Emma had never, in three years of being engaged to his brother, been to the east harbor restaurant district.
"He didn't like seafood," Emma said.
Adrian looked at her.
"Cole loves seafood."
Emma stared at him.
"He told me he was allergic."
"He's eaten lobster at the family table every Christmas since he was twelve."
Emma sat with that for a moment.
Then she started laughing — not the hollow laugh from the harbor promenade, but a real one, surprised out of her by the sheer smallness of it.
All the enormous lies, and somewhere underneath them, a man who had invented a shellfish allergy so he didn't have to go to restaurants he found boring.
Adrian watched her laugh.
Something in his expression was very quiet and very warm.
"I'm sorry," she said, catching her breath.
"It's not funny."
"It's a little funny," he said.
"It's a little funny," she agreed.
She picked up her wine glass.
Outside, the ferry moved slowly across the harbor, its lights trailing in the dark water.
She had spent five months planning a wedding to a man who had lied to her about lobster.
She was sitting across from a man who had put his coat around her shoulders on a cold promenade and waited, without asking anything in return, for her to be ready.
She didn't say any of that out loud.
She didn't need to.
"Tell me about the summer shipping routes," she said.
And he did.
---
The wedding welcome bags stayed in the storage unit until the second week of January, when Emma finally drove over on a Saturday morning with a roll of black bags and dealt with them one by one.
The ivory ribbons she kept — she didn't know why, only that they were beautiful and she had spent two nights choosing them and that seemed like enough of a reason.
She drove home with the ribbons on the passenger seat and the storage unit empty behind her.
She made coffee when she got back.
Set one cup on the counter.
Looked at it for a moment.
Then she picked up her phone and called Tessa.
"I cleared out the storage unit," she said when Tessa answered.
"How was it?"
"Fine," Emma said.
And meant it.
Outside, the November cold had finally given way to something quieter.
The harbor was flat and pale in the January light.
The ferry was making its first crossing of the morning, steady and unhurried, moving from one side of Port Mercy to the other.
Emma stood at her window with her coffee and watched it go.
---
*Sometimes the people who were supposed to protect us are the ones who needed protecting all along — and the people we never expected become the ones who stay.*
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