I’ve got the whole thing covered.”
Another said, “You know me.
Family comes first.”
Then came a message he had sent his mother three days before the party.
I had found it only because Michael had left his tablet synced to his phone on the kitchen counter.
Jessica had asked whether I would be sitting near the main table.
Michael replied, “Put her wherever.
She’ll complain if she gets ignored, but she won’t do anything.”
Jessica answered, “And the girls?”
Michael wrote, “Same.
Just keep them out of Dad’s pictures if you can.”
I had stared at that sentence for almost an hour when I first found it.
Not because I was surprised by Jessica.
Because Michael had typed it.
The father of those two girls had agreed to make them disappear from their grandfather’s birthday photographs because his mother considered them an embarrassment.
That was when I stopped wondering whether my marriage could be repaired.
The party merely gave me a date.
My phone lit up with a text from David.
Call me.
I did not.
A second message appeared.
Please.
I looked back at Olivia.
She was watching me.
Children notice the expression adults think they are hiding.
“Is Dad mad?” she asked.
“Probably.”
“At us?”
The question made something inside me go completely still.
“No,” I said.
“None of this is because of you or Megan.”
I turned around in my seat so she could see my face.
“You did nothing wrong tonight.
Do you understand?”
She nodded, but only after a second.
My phone rang again.
David.
This time I answered.
His voice sounded different from Michael’s.
Not angry.
Smaller.
“Did you pay for this dinner?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
Behind him, the restaurant had become strangely quiet.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
I thought about that.
“I tried to tell Michael we couldn’t keep spending money just so everyone would think he was successful.
He told me it mattered to you.”
David exhaled.
“I never asked for this.”
“I know that now.”
There was another silence.
Then he said, “Jessica should never have spoken to the girls that way.”
I looked at the stain on Megan’s dress.
