Chapter 6 - What Daniel Finally Said
Daniel came to my apartment the next morning.
I had spent the night at my parents’ house, sleeping in my old bedroom while my wedding dress hung over a chair like evidence from a dream. At 6:40 a.m., I drove back to my apartment alone, still wearing yesterday’s makeup badly removed, my hair full of pins I had missed, and my left hand feeling lighter in a way that hurt and freed me at the same time.
He was waiting in the hallway.
No tuxedo now. Just slacks, a wrinkled shirt, and a face that looked older than it had under the canopy.
“Please,” he said. “Just talk to me.”
I unlocked my door and stepped inside.
He followed only after I said he could.
That mattered. Barely. But it mattered.
He stood in my living room, looking at my thrifted coffee table, my stack of library books, the framed photo of my parents at their twenty-fifth anniversary. His eyes paused on my father’s grease-darkened hands resting on my mother’s shoulder.
“I didn’t know it would look that bad,” he said.
I stared at him.
“That is your opening?”
He rubbed his face.
“No. I mean—Bethany, I knew Mom moved them. I knew she wanted certain people at the table. I thought it was rude, but I didn’t think you’d see it before the ceremony.”
There it was.
Not remorse.
Bad logistics.
“You thought I’d find out after I married you.”
He looked down.
“I was going to fix it later.”
“Later is where you put every insult your mother handed me.”
His eyes filled, and for a second I saw the man I had loved: the soft laugh, the nervous kindness, the person who held my hand after hard days and made me believe he wanted a life with me. That man had been real. That was the cruelest part. Cowards are not always monsters. Sometimes they are men who love you right up until loving you costs them comfort.
“My father’s merger was important,” Daniel said quietly. “Everything was already arranged. Mom said your parents would understand.”
“My parents understood perfectly.”
He flinched.
“I’m sorry.”
I believed he meant it.
I also knew sorry did not rebuild what his silence had revealed.
“Daniel, if I had married you yesterday, where would my parents have sat for the rest of our life?”
He did not answer.
Because we both knew.
Near the kitchen door.
Close enough to be used.
Far enough not to be seen.
I opened my door.
He looked at my bare hand.
“Is there any way back?”
May you like
I thought about the white canopy, my father’s arm, my mother holding my bouquet, Marguerite’s pearls, the message about the merger, the table set with strangers where my parents should have been.
“No,” I said. “Not to that life.”
