Chapter 2
I turned my back on the raised phone and drew Betty and Mia with me, one hand around each of their shoulders.
“Come on,” I whispered. “We’re getting out of the aisle.”
Betty’s fingers clenched in my sleeve. Mia stared past me at Daniel, who had moved between us and the guests. He held one hand out—not touching the girls, not blocking their way, just asking the room to give us space.
“Please,” he said. “Put the phones down.”
A few guests lowered theirs. The one near the back didn’t.
Eleanor’s voice followed us.
“Don’t let her leave before you hear what she did.”
Amanda stepped into Eleanor’s path, bouquet crushed slightly in her grip.
“You accused her of extortion. Now you’re telling strangers she’s a criminal. What exactly do you want them to hear?”
“I want them to know who she is.”
“I’m standing right here,” I said.
Eleanor’s eyes held mine. They were as cool as I remembered, but the years had made me less willing to mistake composure for truth.
“Then you should have no trouble explaining why you took confidential company information.”
Mia pressed closer to my hip.
“Mom?” she whispered.
“It’s all right,” I said, though the room had gone so quiet I could hear the soft scrape of someone shifting in a chair. “Stay with me.”
Daniel faced his mother.
“Not in front of them.”
“Those girls deserve to know the kind of person who brought them here.”
“They deserve not to be used as an audience,” Amanda said.
For one brief second, Eleanor looked at Amanda as if she’d forgotten she was there. Then she reached into her small black clutch and drew out a folded packet.
My stomach tightened before I could see what was inside.
The pages were familiar: the same clean printouts, the same company header, the same tidy arrangement meant to make accusation look like proof. Eight years had passed, but Eleanor had kept them.
She lifted the packet so the guests could see.
“These are the records Rachel stole from Harden Systems. She disappeared after I confronted her. Now she’s back, with two children, on Daniel’s wedding day.”
A whisper rippled through the room. The phones rose again.
I knew those emails were forged. I knew it with the certainty of a scar I could feel before the weather changed. But certainty was not a document I could hold up. Not here, not with Betty looking from the pages to my face, waiting for me to tell her whether we were in danger.
“I didn’t steal anything,” I said.
Eleanor’s expression softened into something almost sorrowful. It was the same expression she’d worn in her office when she’d threatened to send the file to the authorities.
“You said that before.”
“I never said anything to you before,” I replied. “You gave me no chance.”
Her mouth tightened.
Daniel took a step toward her. “Put the papers away.”
“Why? They’re relevant.”
“No,” he said. “They’re a weapon.”
The word seemed to land harder than his raised voice would have. Eleanor lowered the packet by an inch, and I saw the flicker in her face: anger, quickly hidden, at being named correctly in front of witnesses.
Amanda’s bouquet trembled. She glanced at the girls, then at the phones, and made a choice.
“Everyone needs to give them room,” she said. “Now.”
The authority in her voice surprised the guests. It surprised me, too. She had been standing at the altar minutes earlier, her wedding interrupted by a secret she hadn’t known existed. She didn’t look like a woman who had decided what to believe. She looked like someone who knew two frightened children shouldn’t have to wait for that decision.
A few guests stepped back. Daniel moved with them, keeping the aisle clear.
Amanda came closer, but stopped several feet away from the girls.
“There’s a private sitting room off the east hall,” she said to me. “You can take them there.”
Eleanor gave a short, humorless laugh.
“How generous.”
Amanda didn’t look at her. “It’s not for you to decide.”
The words made something in me loosen, and that frightened me almost as much as Eleanor’s packet. Accepting Amanda’s help felt like stepping onto a floor I hadn’t tested. But the girls were still pressed against me, and the guests were still watching.
“Thank you,” I said.
Amanda nodded once, as if she knew gratitude was all I could manage.
“I’ll come with you.”
Eleanor shifted toward the aisle. Daniel blocked her without touching her.
“Let them go,” he said.
“I am not stopping them.”
“Then stop following them.”
Her eyes moved over his shoulder to me. “You’re making a mistake, Daniel.”
“I’ve made enough of those without your help.”
He didn’t look at me when he said it. Still, the words caught beneath my ribs. I couldn’t tell whether he meant the wedding, the years, or something else entirely. I kept moving before the question could take shape.
The east hall smelled of beeswax and the white flowers spilling from arrangements along the walls. The music had stopped, but the silence hadn’t settled; behind us, people murmured in clusters, and shoes hurried across the polished floor.
Betty walked close enough that her skirt brushed mine.
“Are we in trouble?” she asked.
“No.”
I answered too quickly. She looked up at me, and I made myself slow down.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of you.”
Mia’s eyes shone. “Is that lady mad because we’re his daughters?”
I crouched so I could meet her gaze. The rose petals caught in the lace at her hem. I gently plucked one free.
“She’s angry,” I said. “But that isn’t your fault.”
“Why is everyone looking at us?”
“Because grown-ups sometimes forget children can hear them.”
Amanda had followed us into the hall. At that, she lowered her eyes, and the careful composure slipped from her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the girls. “You should have been welcomed today. You didn’t deserve any of this.”
Betty studied her. “Are you marrying our dad?”
Amanda’s fingers closed around the stems of her bouquet.
“I don’t know what’s happening with the wedding,” she said. “But I know you need a quiet place right now.”
She led us to a side door and opened it into a sitting room with a fire burning low beneath a stone mantel. The room was warm, softly lit, and empty except for a sofa and a tray of untouched glasses. Amanda shut the door behind us, and the hush felt almost unreal after the crowd.
Mia sat beside Betty, baskets of roses balanced carefully on her knees.
I stayed standing.
“Thank you,” I told Amanda again.
“I’m not doing this because I’ve decided what I believe,” she said. “I’m doing it because they’re children.”
“I understand.”
“I hope you do.”
Her honesty stung, but I respected it more than comfort I hadn’t earned. She set her bouquet on a table and looked toward the door, where footsteps paused outside, then moved away.
“Eleanor won’t let this stay here,” she said.
Before I could ask what she meant, Amanda’s phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced at the screen, and the color drained from her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
She didn’t answer immediately. Her thumb moved once, opening a message. Then she turned the phone so I could read it.
The sender was Mara, the event’s publicist. Beneath the text was a screenshot of an email sent to a reporter.
Eleanor’s name sat at the top.
The subject line read: A statement regarding Rachel Miller and the Harden Systems theft.
May you like
Amanda’s phone buzzed again.
The ceremony wasn’t even over, and Eleanor had already found an audience beyond the room.
