Chapter 3 - Her Phone Held What Dad Never Wrote
I could feel the heat from the altar lights on the back of my neck. Dad did not move. His left hand was bare now, the skin where the ring had been a little paler than the rest. He had slipped the ring into his pants pocket. I heard the fabric catch when he pushed it down deep.
Claire lifted both hands a little, like she was trying to calm a room. The lace of her long sleeves caught the light.
“Everybody, please,” she whispered, and then louder, to Dad, “Can we not do this in front of everyone?”
Dad did not look at the rows. He looked down at me. My hair was still wet against my shirt and I could feel a drop slide down my spine. I tried not to shiver.
“You said it,” he said, low. “You said I told you I didn’t want you anymore. Those were your words.”
My throat hurt. My sister was not here with us. She was back in the side room with the lady Claire had paid to watch us, and I kept thinking I should have brought her with me. I nodded before I could stop myself.
“Claire said you didn’t want us anymore,” I said. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted.
Dad’s jaw tightened. “I never said that,” he said.
I glanced at Claire. Her mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes were shiny, but she was not crying yet. She kept looking past Dad toward the back, where I knew her coordinator was standing.
“She showed us your messages,” I said.
That was the part I had held in my head for months. The blue bubbles on her phone. The name at the top that said Daniel. I had read them over her shoulder in the apartment kitchen while my sister sat on the counter swinging her legs. I had believed them because why would Claire type them herself?
Dad went very still. The organ music had stopped a while ago and the room was so quiet I could hear the air conditioner humming above the floral arch. White roses and little white flowers I did not know the name of. They smelled too sweet.
“How long have you believed I wrote this?” he asked.
He said it slow, not angry the way Claire said he would get. Restrained. Like he was holding something heavy and trying not to drop it on me.
I swallowed. “Since Claire showed it to us,” I said.
Claire made a sound. “Daniel, stop. You are scaring her. Sophie, honey, come here —”
She reached out. The veil moved off her shoulder. I stepped farther behind Dad and felt his tuxedo jacket brush my cheek. He shifted just enough to keep himself between us without pushing me.
“I never wrote a word of it,” he said.
He did not say it to Claire. He said it to me, looking straight at me. His eyes did not leave my face.
“There is no —” He stopped, breathed in through his nose. “I did not send your sister or you any message like that. Not once in six months.”
Claire shook her head fast. “That is not true. You were busy. You were — you don’t remember what you wrote when you were upset.”
Dad’s voice stayed flat. “Show me.”
“What?”
“If I wrote it,” he said, “show me. Right now. In front of everyone.”
Claire’s hands dropped to her sides. She grabbed a fold of her dress. The lace pulled tight over her fingers.
“Not here,” she said. “Daniel, you don’t understand.”
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I looked up at Dad. I wanted him to be lying less than I wanted Claire to be telling the truth. That was the awful part. I had carried those messages in my stomach for months, and now he was saying the words plain, and I did not know where to put them.
Behind us, someone coughed. A chair scraped. Nobody left.
