Chapter 5: The Thing That Wasn't the Only Thing
Every person in that room heard it.
Felicity seemed to realize what she'd said a half-second after she said it.
Her hand came up slightly, as if she might physically pull the words back.
Then she straightened, and the careful, polished version of my sister returned — but it was sitting on top of something cracked now, and everyone could see the edges.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Nothing.
I misspoke."
"Felicity."
"I said I misspoke, Jenna."
Silas turned to look at her.
Just looked.
He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Felicity's composure held for approximately four seconds under that gaze.
Then she looked away.
"There was a letter," Patricia said from across the room.
Her voice was quieter now, like she was choosing each word carefully.
"From your mother."
The air went out of me.
My mother had d*ed when I was six.
A car accident.
I had three photographs of her and a memory of her perfume that I was no longer certain was real.
My father had never spoken about her willingly.
When I asked questions as a child, he changed the subject.
When I asked as a teenager, he told me it was too painful.
When I stopped asking, he seemed relieved.
"What letter?" I said.
Patricia looked at my father.
He was staring at the floor.
"Your mother wrote it when she was in the hospital," Patricia said.
"After the accident.
She survived for eleven days.
She wrote letters to both of you." She paused.
"Felicity received hers on her eighteenth birthday.
The way your mother requested."
I turned to Felicity.
Her eyes were wet.
For the first time all evening, she looked like she didn't know what expression to wear.
"You got a letter from our mother," I said.
"And you never told me."
"Dad said—"
"What did Dad say?"
"He said yours was lost.
That it never—" She stopped.
Swallowed.
"I was eighteen.
I believed him."
"Did you believe him when you were twenty-five?
When you were twenty-eight?"
Silence.
"Did you believe him last year, Felicity?"
Her jaw tightened.
"It wasn't my place to—"
"She was my mother." My voice broke on the last word.
Just slightly.
Just once.
"She was my mother and she wrote me a letter and I never—" I stopped.
Pressed my hand flat against the table beside me.
Silas stepped closer.
Not intrusively.
Just close enough.
"Richard." His voice was very quiet now.
The kind of quiet that is more serious than shouting.
"Where is the letter?"
My father looked up.
His eyes moved to me, then away.
"I don't know what Patricia is talking about."
"You're lying," Patricia said.
Not with anger.
With exhaustion.
The exhaustion of someone who has known a thing for a long time and is finally done pretending otherwise.
"It's in the lockbox.
The grey one in your study.
It's been there since 2002."
My father's head snapped toward her.
"I found it eight years ago," she said.
"When I was looking for the insurance documents.
I read enough to understand what it was." She looked at me.
"I should have told you then.
I didn't.
That is something I will carry for the rest of my life."
The room had gone so still that I could hear someone near the back quietly crying.
A guest.
A stranger who had come to watch a wedding and was watching something else entirely.
Daniel — the groom, Silas's son, who had been silent at the head table through all of it — pushed his chair back and stood up.
"Dad," he said.
"What do you need?"
Silas looked at his son.
Something passed between them — the specific shorthand of two people who had nearly lost each other and knew it.
"Nothing right now," Silas said.
"Stay with your wife."
Daniel looked at Felicity.
His new wife.
The woman he had married four hours ago.
Felicity was not looking at him.
She was looking at me.
"I'm sorry," she said.
The words came out small.
Stripped of the performance she'd been maintaining all evening.
"Jenna.
I'm sorry.
I should have—"
"Don't." I held up one hand.
"Not right now.
Not here."
She nodded.
Her eyes dropped.
My father cleared his throat.
"I think what everyone needs is to calm down and let this evening—"
"Richard." Silas turned to face him fully.
"I'm going to ask you one more time, and I'd like a straight answer.
Is that letter still in your home?"
My father said nothing.
"Because if it is," Silas said, "Jenna will have it by tomorrow morning.
I'll see to that personally."
My father's eyes went cold.
"You have no right to involve yourself in my family's—"
"She saved my life." The words landed flat and final.
"That gives me every right."
The band, somewhere in the back of the room, had stopped playing entirely.
The catering staff had gone still near the kitchen doors.
120 people were holding their breath.
My father looked around the room.
At the faces watching him.
At his wife, who had stopped being his ally.
At his daughter Felicity, who had stopped being his shield.
He straightened his jacket.
"I'll need to find the key," he said stiffly.
May you like
"Tonight," Silas said.
It wasn't a question.
