Chapter 7: The Last Move
It came forty minutes later, when Marcus stepped away to take a phone call and my father asked to use the restroom and the two colleagues at the door shifted their attention for less than a minute.
Juliette moved to the head table.
She picked up the security drive.
She was halfway to the kitchen corridor when Elliot said, "Put it down."
She stopped.
Elliot was standing up.
He had his jacket back on.
His face was very calm.
"Elliot," she said.
"You don't understand what's in this room."
"I understand enough."
"I can explain everything.
All of it.
If you just give me ten minutes—"
"You showed me a forged death certificate and told me it was a clerical error." His voice didn't rise.
"I believed you.
I chose to believe you because I wanted to." He walked toward her slowly.
"Put the drive down, Juliette."
"If that drive goes to the police, my life is over."
"You ended someone else's life.
You ended it while she was still breathing."
Juliette looked at him for a long moment.
Something moved across her face — not guilt, not remorse, but a kind of grief for a version of events that had never been real.
"I loved you," she said.
"That part was real."
"Put the drive down."
Her hand opened.
The drive landed on the marble with a small, hard sound.
Marcus came back through the service door at a near run, phone still in hand.
He took in the scene in one look — Juliette standing over the drive, Elliot two feet away, every guest in the room watching.
He picked up the drive.
"My colleagues are outside," he said to Juliette.
"They'd like to speak with you."
"Am I being arrested?"
"You're being asked to come in voluntarily for questioning.
You can have your lawyer present."
Juliette's lawyer was already at her side.
She looked at me one last time across the room.
I expected anger.
I expected calculation.
I expected the particular expression she had worn my entire childhood — the one that said she had already thought of something I hadn't.
Instead she looked tired.
Not sorry.
Not broken.
Just tired in the way of someone who has been holding a very heavy thing for a very long time and has finally been forced to set it down.
"You should have stayed d@ad," she said.
It was the last thing she said to me.
Marcus's colleagues came through the ballroom doors.
Juliette walked toward them without being led.
Her lawyer fell into step beside her.
Her wedding dress dragged along the marble as she went, the satin train catching the light from the chandeliers one last time.
The doors closed behind her.
The room let out a breath.
My father came back from the corridor and stopped when he saw the empty space where Juliette had been standing.
He looked at the doors.
He looked at Marcus.
"Is it done?" he said.
"It's started," Marcus said.
"It won't be fast.
But it's started."
My father nodded.
He walked toward me slowly, the way a man walks when he is not sure he will be received.
He stopped in front of me.
He looked at my face — at the scars, at the right side that still looked enough like his daughter that he had recognized me the moment I walked in.
"I failed you," he said.
"I failed you for years before the fire and I failed you after it.
I don't expect you to forgive me today.
I don't expect you to forgive me at all."
I didn't say anything.
"But I would like the chance to try," he said.
"If you're willing."
Behind him, Nora was watching.
Elliot was watching.
The remaining guests were watching.
I looked at my father for a long time.
"Ask me again in a year," I said.
He nodded.
May you like
That was enough for now.
It had to be.
