When the first light came through the window, pale and gold, I was still awake, and Poppy was still asleep in my arms, and I knew what the morning would bring. I would cancel the rehearsal dinner. I would cancel the wedding. I would call my lawyer. And I would begin the long work of making sure that no one ever hurt my daughter again.
Chapter 9
— Cancelling Everything
Morning came pale and gold through the window, and Poppy was still asleep in my arms. I lay there for a while, listening to her breathe, and then I eased myself out of the bed, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and went downstairs to make coffee. Dolores was already in the kitchen, and she looked up when I came in, and she nodded, as if she already knew what the day would bring.
"She slept?" Dolores asked.
"She slept," I said. "She woke up once, in the middle of the night, and I told her the wedding was off, and she asked me to stay with her, and I stayed."
Dolores nodded again, and she poured me a cup of coffee, and she said, "You did the right thing, Beau. Last night, and this morning, and every morning after this."
I drank the coffee standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the garden, at the big tree at the far end of the lawn, and I made a list in my head of everything that had to be done. First, the rehearsal dinner. Then the wedding. Then the guests, the flowers, the caterer, the musicians, all the people who had been part of a celebration that was never going to happen. And then, last, the lawyer, because there were things I did not yet understand, things about Veronica and the way she had behaved, that I needed someone steady to help me think through.
I called the caterer first. He answered on the second ring, his voice cheerful, and I told him, as plainly as I could, that the rehearsal dinner was cancelled, and the wedding was cancelled, and that I was sorry for the trouble, and that I would pay him for the work he had already done. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said he was sorry to hear it. I told him my daughter was safe, and that was what mattered, and he said he would take care of the rest, and he wished me well.
Next I called the woman who had made the flowers. She had already cut the roses, and she told me not to worry about the cost, and I thanked her. Each call was a small ending, a door closing on a life I had imagined.
I called the musicians, and the woman who had rented us the chairs, and the friends who had planned to travel, and each time I said the same words, that the wedding was off, and that I was sorry. Some asked questions, and I told them there would be time for answers later.
When the calls were done, I sat at the kitchen table and thought about how quickly a life could change. Yesterday morning, I had been a man planning a wedding. This morning, I was a man cancelling one. Yesterday, I had trusted Veronica. Today, I did not trust her at all.
That was when I called Oliver Pembroke. He had been my lawyer for years, a steady, thorough man who had helped me with the workshop and with Meredith's affairs after she died, and I trusted him the way you trust a man who has never once given you a reason not to. I told him what had happened, from the rehearsal dinner to the stairs to the night, and I told him what Dolores had told me, and what Poppy had told Dolores, and he listened without interrupting, the way he always did.
"Beau," he said, when I had finished, "you did the right thing. You protected your daughter, and you got Veronica out of the house, and you changed the locks. That was exactly right. Now I want you to come and see me, and I want you to bring anything Veronica ever asked you to sign, and anything she left behind. There may be more to this than hair."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean that a woman who tells a child she is not good enough, and then tells her not to tell her father, is a woman with a plan," Oliver said. "And I want to know what that plan was. Come and see me tomorrow morning, first thing, and we will go through it together."
I thanked him, and I hung up, and I sat at the kitchen table, looking out at the garden. Upstairs, Poppy was waking up, and I could hear her small feet on the floor above me. My daughter was safe, and the wedding was cancelled, and the locks were changed, and for the first time since the night before, I felt something like hope.
Poppy came downstairs a little while later, in her play dress, her short hair catching the morning light, and she climbed onto my lap, and she put her arms around my neck, and she said, "Daddy, can we go to the garden today?"
"Yes," I said. "We can go to the garden, and we can sit under the tree, and I can tell you about it, as many times as you like."
She smiled then, a real smile, and her eyes were bright, and I held her close, and I thought about the long road ahead, and about the lawyer waiting in the morning, and about the secrets I did not yet know. The wedding was over. The story was just beginning.