Chapter 10: The Wedding He Would Not Cancel
The assistant looked at the invoice as if it had become dangerous just by being named.
Nora didn’t press her. Neither did I. We knew what Charles had asked her to do. We didn’t know what she had done—or what he had taken.
“Can you tell us where the old billing file is?” Nora asked.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
The assistant’s fingers tightened around her visitor badge. “I have to go.”
Cordelia stood aside to let her pass. The woman hurried into the corridor without looking back.
By the time we reached the lobby, Charles’s assistant had sent a family announcement to the relatives who had attended the dinner. The wedding, it said, would take place that Friday instead of the following week. Charles’s message described the change as a way to give Phoebe and the girls “security and peace.”
Phoebe read it over my shoulder.
“Peace,” she said. “He means nobody gets enough time to ask questions.”
Nora called the family-office assistant. It rang until voicemail. She sent a short message asking the woman to confirm what she had told us.
No reply came.
We went back upstairs. The assistant’s desk sat empty. Her chair was pushed in; her mug was gone. A neat stack of folders remained, but the invoice we had examined wasn’t among them. Nora checked the hallway and the reception desk. No one knew where the woman was.
“Maybe she’s gone home,” Cordelia said, though she sounded unconvinced.
Nora tried calling again. Voicemail.
The silence followed us into the Beacon Hill house that evening.
Charles had summoned the relatives for what he called a “wedding update.” The dining room was bright with candles and polished silver. Beyond the windows, Boston had darkened into a blur of rain. Phoebe stood beside me, one hand resting beneath the curve of her belly. Cordelia was on her other side.
Charles came in last, perfectly composed.
“The wedding is Friday,” he announced. “We’ve made the arrangements. Phoebe and I have agreed that there’s no reason to prolong this.”
Phoebe’s fingers tightened on the back of her chair.
“No,” she said.
The room stopped moving.
Charles gave her the patient smile he used when he wanted to make disagreement look childish.
“Phoebe, we’ve discussed this.”
“We discussed you asking me to leave Boston without letting me speak to Hannah or the clinic. I said no then. I’m saying no now.”
One of his cousins lowered her glass. At the far end of the table, an older relative stared at Charles as if she’d never seen him clearly before.
He kept his smile in place.
“This is not the time.”
“It’s the only time you’ve left me.”
Phoebe’s voice shook, but she didn’t lower it.
“You keep telling everyone that Hannah gave you those embryos. You still haven’t shown me her consent. You still haven’t explained why the records say what they say. I will not marry you while you refuse to answer.”
A murmur passed around the table. It wasn’t loud, but Charles heard it. His smile vanished.
I felt Phoebe’s shoulder brush mine. She was frightened. She stood her ground anyway.
Charles looked directly at me.
“You’ve been filling her head with accusations.”
“I told her what the clinic records showed.”
“You have a confidentiality agreement, Hannah.”
“And you’ve been telling people I’m harassing Phoebe.”
“I’ve been protecting my family.”
Cordelia set down her glass. The clink was small and sharp.
“Do not call this protection.”
Charles turned on his mother.
“You, of all people, should understand what’s at stake.”
“I do,” Cordelia said. “That is why I’m no longer pretending your version is the only one.”
For one brief second, he looked less angry than betrayed. Then he reached into his jacket and placed a folded letter on the table in front of me.
“My attorney will pursue a defamation claim if you keep spreading false statements,” he said. “And the confidentiality clause will be enforced against anyone who helps you.”
He glanced at Cordelia.
The old Cordelia might have flinched. This one looked at the letter without touching it.
“You used silence as a weapon once,” she said. “It won’t make your story true.”
Charles’s jaw shifted. He looked around the table, measuring each face, then fixed his attention on Phoebe.
“If you cancel Friday, don’t expect me to keep paying for your arrangements.”
Phoebe’s hand moved protectively over her stomach.
“I didn’t ask you to buy me.”
“No,” he said softly. “You just accepted everything I offered.”
The words landed harder than a shout. For a moment, Phoebe’s face went white. Then she lifted her chin.
“I believed you. That’s not the same as belonging to you.”
No one rushed to fill the silence. Charles pushed back his chair.
“The wedding proceeds Friday,” he said. “Whether either of you likes it or not.”
He left the room.
The relatives began speaking all at once, questions and objections tangling together. Phoebe sat down slowly, one palm flat against the table. I wanted to tell her she had been brave. Instead, I stayed beside her while the room watched her decide what to do next.
At the family office the following morning, Nora called the assistant again. No answer. Her desk was still empty. The receptionist said she hadn’t seen the woman come in.
“Do you know where she is?” Nora asked.
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
Nora ended the call and stared at the phone.
“She could have changed her mind,” I said.
“She could have,” Nora replied. “But she could also be frightened.”
Neither possibility made the silence easier to bear.
I was reaching for my coat when someone appeared at the office door and handed Nora a plain envelope. No return address. No name.
“Who brought this?” Nora asked.
The messenger was already walking away.
Nora turned the envelope over. “Should we open it?”
I looked at the blank paper, then at Cordelia. She nodded once.
Inside was a single page, folded in half. It appeared to be the missing authorization page from the clinic packet. My name was printed beneath the signature line. Above it, a signature curved across the paper in a hand I recognized—and knew I had not written.
My stomach tightened.
Nora held the page by its edges, careful not to cover the marks. She leaned closer, scanning the signature, then the printed lines.
“That doesn’t look like yours,” she said.
“No.”
She moved the paper toward the window, where the gray morning light fell across its upper corner.
Then Nora went still.
“What?” Cordelia asked.
Nora pointed to the small clinic stamp near the bottom.
“The date,” she said.
May you like
I looked where she pointed.
The stamp was dated two days after the embryos had been transferred.
