Chapter 7: The Part of the Evening That Couldn't Be Undone
Nathan stood between his father-in-law and me, and for the first time all evening, he was in the right place.
Richard looked at him.
"You're making a mistake."
"I've been making mistakes all night," Nathan said.
"I'm done making them."
Tiffany stood up from her chair.
Her wedding dress caught the light as she moved, and for a moment she looked exactly like the bride she had spent six months designing herself to be.
Then she looked at her father, and the image cracked.
"Dad," she said.
"Tell me you didn't use my wedding to run a business deal."
Richard straightened his jacket.
"Everything I did was legal."
"That's not what I asked."
"Tiffany—"
"Did you use my wedding." Her voice was flat.
"Yes or no."
Richard looked at her for a long moment.
Then he picked up his glass from the table, took a slow sip, and set it down.
"I protected your future," he said.
"That land is worth three times what I paid once the development goes through.
In five years, that money comes back to you and Nathan.
I did this for your family."
"You did it for yourself," she said.
"You always do it for yourself and then you explain it to me afterward."
"Tiffany—"
"Don't." She stepped back from him.
One step, then two.
"Don't explain it to me."
Richard set his glass down and looked around the table with the expression of a man recalculating.
Then he looked at me.
"I'll have my attorney contact yours on Monday," he said.
"We can resolve this quietly."
"You can have your attorney contact mine," I agreed.
"But I'll be making my own calls first."
He held my gaze for three seconds.
Then he walked away from the table, back toward the bar, back toward the version of the evening where he was still the father of the bride and none of this had happened.
Nathan watched him go.
Then he sat down heavily in the chair Richard had vacated.
"I need you to tell me everything," he said to Tiffany.
"From the beginning.
Not the version where your father was protecting us.
The actual beginning."
Tiffany sat down across from him.
She looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
"I met you and I liked you," she said.
"That was real.
I want you to hold onto that."
"I'm holding onto it," Nathan said.
"Keep going."
"Dad found out about the land about six months before we got engaged.
He mentioned it to me.
He said the Bennett family owned acreage that connected two of his parcels and he'd been trying to buy it for years but your mother wouldn't sell." She paused.
"He didn't tell me to pursue you.
He just mentioned it.
But I knew what he was saying."
"And you pursued me anyway."
"I pursued you because I wanted to.
But I also knew it would make Dad happy.
And I've spent my whole life trying to make Dad happy." Her voice broke slightly on the last sentence, and it was the first thing she'd said all evening that sounded completely true.
Nathan looked at her for a long time.
"When did you tell him about the land sale?"
"When you told me your mother was considering it.
I mentioned it to Dad at dinner.
He made a phone call the next morning."
"And the contract clause?"
"He asked me to add it.
He said it was just a precaution.
I didn't think it would matter because I thought the wedding would go perfectly and your mother would never look at the contract closely." She looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Margaret.
I know that's not enough."
I looked at her.
She was twenty-nine years old, sitting in a wedding dress at her own reception, watching her marriage come apart in real time.
"It's not enough," I said.
"But I hear you."
Nathan put his face in his hands for a moment.
When he looked up, his eyes were red.
"The sl@p," he said to Tiffany.
"That wasn't about the champagne."
She shook her head slowly.
"I panicked.
You were pulling away from me all day and I could feel it.
And then your mother said no in front of everyone and I felt everything collapsing and I—" She stopped.
"There's no excuse.
I know there's no excuse."
"No," Nathan said.
"There isn't."
He reached across the table then — not to take her hand, but to pick up the folded document I had left between them.
He looked at it for a long moment.
"Mom," he said.
"I need to ask you something."
"Ask."
"Is there any version of tonight where you don't make those calls on Monday?"
I thought about Thomas's land.
I thought about the twelve acres I had signed away in a car park while crying.
I thought about Richard Calloway at a dinner table, making a phone call the next morning.
"No," I said.
"There isn't."
Nathan nodded slowly.
He set the document down.
Outside the ballroom windows, the garden terrace was dark.
The floral installation had never been completed.
The dessert station had never been set up.
The car service for the send-off was still waiting on a call that had never come.
May you like
The most expensive parts of the evening had never arrived.
And the night was almost over.
