I stared at her.
My own mother stood in my own house, protecting the woman who had married my husband behind my back, and asked me to lower my voice.
The caterer quietly gathered the torn invoice from my hand. “I’ll leave you all to it,” he said.
“No,” I said.
He paused.
I looked at the folder beneath his arm. “I need copies of every document you have. The booking, the payment records, the messages, all of it.”
Daniel’s head snapped toward me.
“Haley, don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make this ugly.”
I stepped down from the porch until I stood directly in front of him.
“You built a wedding on my lawn while I was out of town. You put my name on contracts I never saw. You let me come home and walk through it like a stranger.”
His eyes dropped.
“You made it ugly,” I said.
CHAPTER 2 – The Locked Room
The caterer handed me his business card with both hands.
“Call the office,” he said. “Ask for Maribel. Tell her I told you to release the file. She can send everything over.”
“Thank you.”
Daniel moved closer, but I lifted my palm between us.
He stopped.
Chelsea wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand, leaving a gray streak of mascara beneath one eye. It should have made her look human. Instead, all I could see was her fingers twisting the ring Daniel had put there.
“I didn’t want this,” she whispered.
The sentence landed so softly I almost missed it.
Daniel looked at her.
Chelsea looked away.
Mom tightened her arm around her. “She has been under a great deal of pressure.”
“From who?” I asked.
No one answered.
Dad came to the doorway, carrying the glass he had been drinking from the night before. “You’re acting as though this happened to you alone.”
The words were so cruel they brought a strange calm.
