Chapter 7
— Pack Your Things
I found Veronica in the spare room, standing in front of the open wardrobe where her wedding dress hung in its long white bag. She was smoothing the fabric with one hand, the way she had smoothed Poppy's curl that morning, and when she heard my footsteps she turned and smiled, as if nothing had happened, as if the day had been ordinary.
"Beau," she said, "I was just thinking about the rehearsal dinner. I think we should move the flowers to the far end of the table. They will photograph better there."
I looked at her, and I did not recognize her. I had known this woman for two years. I had asked her to marry me. I had trusted her with my daughter. And now I was standing in a room with a stranger, a woman who could cut a little girl's hair and then stand in front of a wedding dress and talk about flowers as if the two things belonged in the same world.
"Veronica," I said, and my voice was quiet, because I had learned long ago that a quiet voice carries further than a shout. "Pack your things."
She stared at me. "What?"
"Pack your things," I said again. "Take your clothes and your books and everything that belongs to you, and leave this house tonight."
Her smile faded, and for a moment I saw surprise cross her face, as if she genuinely could not understand why I was angry. "Beau, you are overreacting," she said. "It is only hair. It will grow back in a few months. You cannot end an engagement over hair."
"It is not about hair," I said. "It is about what you said to my daughter while you were cutting it. You told a six-year-old girl that her curls were ugly, and that no one would love a girl with messy hair, and that you were fixing her so her father would be proud. You told her not to tell me. You told her that if she told me, I would be angry with her. Do you understand what you did? You taught my little girl that my love had to be earned."
Veronica folded her arms. "I was trying to help her, Beau. She needed to learn that the world is not kind to girls who do not take care of themselves. I was trying to prepare her."
"She is six," I said. "She does not need to be prepared. She needs to be loved. And you do not get to decide what she needs, because you are not her mother, and you never will be."
The words hung in the air between us, and I watched her face change, the smooth calm cracking at the edges, and for the first time I saw the anger underneath, the cold, controlled anger of a woman who was used to getting her way.
"You cannot throw me out," she said. "We are engaged. We have a wedding planned. People have been invited. You will look like a fool."
"I would rather look like a fool than let you stay in this house with my daughter for one more night," I said. "Pack your things. I will help you carry them to your car, and then I will change the locks, and you will not come back."
"You cannot change the locks," she said. "This is my home too."
"It is not," I said. "It is my house, and it is Poppy's house, and it was Meredith's house before either of us, and you have no right to it. Pack your things, Veronica. Now."
She looked at me for a long moment, and then she turned to the wardrobe and began to take her clothes down, one hanger at a time, folding them with stiff, angry hands. I stood in the doorway and watched her, and I did not speak, because there was nothing left to say.
When she was done, I carried her bags down the stairs and out to her car, and I set them in the trunk, and I stood on the front step and watched her drive away down the road, past the garden and past the tree, until her headlights disappeared around the bend. Then I went back inside, and I locked the front door behind me, and I went to the workshop and found the box of new locks I had bought months before and never gotten around to fitting. I worked through the evening, fitting the new locks to the front door and the back door, testing each one twice, until I was certain that no old key would turn in them again.
Dolores came to the door of the workshop as I was finishing. "Is she gone?" she asked.
"She is gone," I said. "She will not be coming back."
Dolores nodded, and she put a hand on my shoulder. "You did the right thing, Beau. That child will remember this night for the rest of her life, and she will remember that her father chose her."
I went upstairs and checked on Poppy. She was asleep, her small face peaceful on the pillow, her short hair catching the light from the hallway. I stood in the doorway and watched her for a long time, and I thought about the curls that were gone, and about the woman who had taken them, and about the long road ahead of us. The wedding was over. The life I had planned was over. But my daughter was safe in her bed, and the locks were changed, and the house was ours again.