Chapter 13 - What She Wrote in White Lace
She came up alone. That was the first surprise.
I had left the suite door unlatched after Michael went back down, and I heard the soft drag of her dress in the hallway before I saw her. Sabrina stepped into the sitting room still in the white lace strapless gown, her hair loose over her shoulders now, no champagne flute in her hand. No one with her. No photographer, no bridesmaid to witness.
She stopped just inside the rug and looked at the folder on the coffee table.
"You wanted to talk," she said.
I nodded toward the chair across from me. "Sit down, please."
She didn't at first. She glanced at the bedroom door, half open, where the bed was still unmade from that morning. Then she sat, careful with the skirt, smoothing it over her knees the way she'd done all night at the reception table.
"I didn't cut anything," she said quickly. "I want that clear."
I kept my hands folded. "I didn't say you did. Tell me why you came into my room this morning."
She breathed out through her nose. "I needed the steamer. Mine stopped working and yours was in your closet. I asked the front desk for a spare key."
"You took a spare key to my suite while I was asleep."
"I didn't know you were asleep," she said. "I knocked. You didn't answer. I thought you'd gone down for hair and makeup."
I let the pause sit. "But I hadn't. I was in bed."
She looked away toward the window. "Yes. I saw that when I came in."
That was the first piece, said plain. I made myself hear it exactly as she offered it.
"You saw me asleep," I said. "And then what?"
"I went to the closet. I was just going to grab it and leave." Her fingers picked at a loose thread on the skirt. "Then I saw the wig on the stand. I didn't know — I thought that was your hair last night at the rehearsal dinner."
"It was a wig," I said. "You know the difference now."
"Yes." She swallowed. "I was surprised. I picked it up. I put it back."
I waited. The air conditioner clicked on low behind us.
"Did you touch me?" I asked.
"No." She said it fast. "No, I didn't touch you. I didn't even go near the bed. I just — I saw it, and I left."
I opened the folder and slid the photograph of the note across the table, the one I'd taken at the ballroom before the paper softened from handling. Congratulations you finally have a hairstyle that suits your age. The small heart underneath.
"Then explain this."
She stared at it longer than I expected. Color came up into her cheeks.
"I wrote that," she said.
"When?"
"After. Downstairs. I was angry." She lifted her eyes. "You make me feel judged every time you look at me, Eleanor. At the tasting, at the fitting. Like I'm not enough for him. Like I'm after something."
"You wrote payback," I said.
"It wasn't — " She stopped herself. "I wrote it because I felt small. I wanted you to feel small for once."
There it was, the second piece. I didn't move.
"Did you mean harm about my age?" I asked. "About my illness?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I didn't know you were sick. I didn't know you'd lost your hair. I thought — I thought you were just vain about it. About the gray. I didn't mean it like that."
I looked at her steady. "You wrote about my hairstyle suiting my age while I was asleep in the next room, bald from treatment. You tell me what you meant it like."
She pressed her lips together. "I didn't know."
"Why enter while I slept and not wait until I woke?" I asked. "Why not ask me for the steamer later?"
"I was in a hurry. The dress wrinkled." Her voice thinned. "I wasn't thinking about you sleeping. I was thinking about the photos."
"And the heart?" I pointed to the bottom of the photograph. "Why draw the heart?"
She blinked. "I don't know. I always draw a heart. On thank-you cards, on notes. It's just what I do."
"Just what you do," I repeated.
She leaned forward, earnest now, the way she'd leaned toward guests at the reception when she wanted them to understand. "Eleanor, I went in for a steamer. I saw something I didn't expect. I wrote something stupid because I felt judged. I didn't plan any of this."
I closed the folder over the photograph. "You admitted you took the key. You admitted you saw me asleep and the wig. You admitted you wrote the note because you wanted me to feel small. Is that right?"
She hesitated, hearing it laid out clean. "Yes. But I didn't mean — "
"I heard what you didn't mean," I said.
She stood then, smoothing the lace again, restless. "So what now? Are you going to hold that twenty-two million over us forever because of a note?"
I stayed seated and looked up at her. "I'm going to keep what is true."
She stood there in the white dress in my sitting room, waiting for me to soften it, to say it was all right, to forgive her so she could go back downstairs. I didn't say it.
"Don't leave the hotel tonight," I said. "Michael will need to hear this from you, not from me."
May you like
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She walked to the door and paused with her hand on the frame, but she didn't turn around.
I listened to the dress drag back down the hall.
