“Mr. Lang, we can escort you to retrieve your personal items tomorrow at ten a.m., with Mrs. Moreau’s attorney present,” one said quietly. “As per the notice you were served last week. You signed for it.”
Victor blinked.
“What notice?”
“The envelope you thought was a wine club delivery,” Elise said, not unkindly. “You signed without opening it. It was the formal separation notice and the request for you to vacate the marital residence, which is my separate property. Your attorney has a copy. You have an attorney, don’t you? You told me you didn’t need one.”
A soft, incredulous laugh escaped from somewhere in the back of the room. Then it was swallowed.
Victor’s knees seemed to lose their lock. He sat down hard in the chair Lila had vacated, his champagne glass tipping and spilling in a pale gold arc across the white tablecloth.
No one moved to clean it.
The manager touched Elise’s elbow.
“Mrs. Moreau, would you like us to clear the room?”
Elise shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Let people stay. Let them eat the cake.”
She looked at the cake then, at the twenty-five sugar roses, at the one that had fallen.
Her hand hovered over them.
“Twenty-five roses,” she said, half to herself, half to the microphone that still lay on the table. “I ordered twenty-five because I thought… I thought if I made it beautiful enough, he would remember why he chose me. But on the way here, I asked the baker to add one more. In the box. I didn’t tell anyone.”
She lifted the top tier gently.
Underneath, nestled in tissue, was a single, fresh white rose.
Real.
Not sugar.
Its petals were soft and slightly open, catching the candlelight.
The room leaned in.
“This one is for the year I didn’t know I had,” Elise said, her voice thick now, finally breaking open. “The next one. The one where I get to find out who I am when I’m not waiting to be told I’m enough.”
Her sister made a sound and pushed through the chairs, heels catching on the marble, and threw her arms around Elise from the side. Elise folded into her, forehead dropping to her sister’s shoulder, the clutch and the deed crumpled between them.
The violins, who had been silent for so long, began to play without being asked.
Softly at first, a low, warm swell that filled the ballroom where the humiliation had been supposed to live.
One by one, people stood.
Not for Victor.
For Elise.
An older woman at table three, a client Elise had once advised for free when the woman was starting a bakery, stood and lifted her glass of water.
“To Elise,” she said, her voice shaking.
Another voice joined. “To Elise.”
