“I’m trying to hold things together,” he said. “But I need you to know what’s happening here.”
“Are people leaving?” I asked.
“They’re asking what’s happening. I can keep talking to them. I can’t make the officiant miss his next wedding.”
“I know. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.”
“I just need you to know what the choice is.”
He was entitled to tell me. My decision was costing him something, too.
“I’d rather lose the ceremony than spend the rest of my life pretending I don’t know what Dad did,” I said. “Does that sound unreasonable?”
“No.”
He answered so quickly that I laughed once, unexpectedly, with tears in my eyes.
“Go get the record,” he said. “I’ll keep things together as long as I can. If the officiant leaves, we’ll get married another day. I’ll marry you in a parking lot if that’s what it takes.”
“Theo.”
“The marriage isn’t the room, Nadia. It’s you.”
The same basic thought my father had used to diminish my disappointment sounded entirely different from the man who was willing to share it.
I wiped beneath my eyes, careful of the makeup I’d done myself in the annex bathroom. When I came out, Colleen was waiting by the coat stand, her purse held firmly against her side.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Douglas stood at the desk with his phone in hand. My father was nearby. Preston watched from a short distance away, and Karen remained near the ballroom doors.
“I have the owner on the line,” Douglas announced. “He’s authorized me to tell you that internal records will not be released without a formal legal request. If you refuse to leave a private event, we’ll have to contact the sheriff.”
I looked at the phone. I couldn’t hear the owner. I heard what Douglas said the owner had authorized, and I understood what he wanted me to do next.
“Please don’t force us to take this further in front of your family,” he added.
My father stepped closer.
“Your mother would be heartbroken to see you like this.”
I had prepared myself for anger. I hadn’t prepared myself for that.
“She loved this room,” he said. “And you’re using it to tear this family apart on your sister’s wedding day.”
My throat closed. For a second, the lobby blurred, and I was thinking about Mom instead of the record. What she would have said. Whether she would have wanted me to stop. Whether wanting an answer made me harder than the daughter she remembered.
Dad watched the words land. I couldn’t know everything he intended, but he knew me well enough to choose the one subject I couldn’t answer without feeling as though I was betraying somebody.
Then Theo’s message arrived. The officiant could wait perhaps twenty more minutes. Two families had left because they thought the wedding was canceled. Theo wasn’t angry, he said, but he needed to know whether we were still getting married that day.
I almost typed that I was coming back.
I could leave. I could try to salvage the hour we had left. I could tell myself an attorney would sort out the rest, that refusing to leave proved nothing, that a happy marriage mattered more than a failed family argument.
All of those thoughts contained some truth. That was what made the choice difficult. I didn’t have to stay in the lobby to prove I loved myself. But I knew why my father wanted me out of it. He wasn’t offering me a path back to Theo. He was offering me the familiar task of absorbing what he had done so nobody else would have to see it.
I looked past him at Preston.
“Mr. Hail. You strike me as a careful man.”
He turned toward me.
“Let me be careful with you. Your investment in my father’s company is being presented as a family arrangement. This wedding is part of that presentation.”
My father went still. Colleen remained beside me.
“I’ve been told my reservation was canceled so this one could take its place. My card is connected to the deposit. I didn’t authorize either thing. Your son’s wedding is being held in that room, and the coordinator has given me two explanations that don’t agree.”
Douglas began to object.
“If the records support your explanation,” I told him, “reading them should clear it up.”
Then I faced Preston again.
“I work with records every day. This system keeps a history. There should be an account name and a date attached to the cancellation. If that history eventually becomes part of a legal dispute, your investment is connected to what happened here. Wouldn’t you rather know before the vows?”
“You’re asking me to question the arrangements Roland made,” Preston said.
“I’m asking you to see them. You were told they were clean. That’s what I was told, too.”
“And you think the booking history settles this?”
“I think we should read it before anyone tells us what it means.”
I couldn’t tell him what a court would decide. I could show him that the assurance he’d accepted from my father needed checking.
He studied me, then looked at Roland.
“Open the record.”
“Mr. Hail,” Douglas said, “I can’t just—”
“If the booking is in order, the record protects everyone. If it isn’t, I’d prefer to find out here.”
Douglas looked at the phone, then at my father. Dad couldn’t give him an answer that would satisfy Preston now.
“Open it,” Preston repeated. “I’ll take responsibility.”
Douglas set the phone on the reception desk and leaned over Warren’s terminal. Whatever objection he had been prepared to maintain against me, he didn’t maintain it against the client standing beside him. He logged in.
“The complete history of the original reservation,” Preston said. “Read it aloud.”
Warren looked at me. I nodded.
My father stepped forward before he could begin.
“Stop. All of you. This is ridiculous.”
He turned to Preston, palms open.
“It’s a family account. My name is on paperwork for half the things my daughters do. Insurance, cars, arrangements. Of course you may see my name. I’m their father. I handle things.”
Douglas seized on it.
“That’s a fair point. Shared profiles can carry names across records. We had a system migration last year. There can be data issues that look more significant than they are.”
“Then reading it won’t hurt anyone,” I said.
Both men looked at me.
“If it’s a routine account detail, you’ll be able to show that. If it’s a mistake from a system change, you can explain it. But you can’t ask me to accept the explanation before anyone has read the entry.”
My phone was on the counter when Theo’s final message lit the screen. The officiant had left. He had waited as long as he could. We could go to the courthouse Monday, Theo wrote. He wanted me to come home.
There would be no wedding at the annex that afternoon.
I read the message without picking the phone up. My father was close enough to see the screen and the change in my face. So was Preston.
“The officiant left,” I said.
No one needed to ask which wedding I meant.
“He waited as long as he could. Theo says we can go to the courthouse Monday.”
Saying it made the loss real. The gray suit waiting in the other building. Forty chairs. People leaving without seeing what they had come to see. There would be no walking toward Theo that afternoon.
My father softened his voice.
“Go back to Theo.”
I looked at him.
“You’ve already lost the ceremony, sweetheart. Don’t lose your family, too. Leave now. We won’t speak of this again. I’ll fix things. I’ll pay for another party. Whatever you want. Just not like this. Not in front of them.”
He said it almost tenderly. I could hear how easy it would be to repeat the offer later as proof that he had tried to help.
Karen watched from the ballroom doors. Her champagne flute hung forgotten at her side. Douglas kept a hand close to the keyboard. Warren waited behind the monitor, and Colleen stood near enough that I knew I wasn’t alone even without looking at her.
I picked up my phone and told Theo that Monday was fine. The courthouse was fine. We were fine.
Then I set the phone facedown on the counter.
I couldn’t recover the ceremony by leaving now. The only thing I could still give my father was my agreement to let the explanation end before it reached him.
“Read the whole record. Start with who canceled my booking.”
Warren glanced at Douglas. Douglas looked at Preston, who gave a small nod. Warren turned back to the screen and moved to the beginning of the history.
“The cancellation of the original Westbrook reservation was entered through an account in the name of Roland Westbrook.”
My father spoke immediately.
“As I said. A family account.”
Warren kept his place.
“Entered January nineteenth.”
Preston slowly turned toward him.
“January? Spencer proposed in April. I was there. I paid for the restaurant.”
Dad started to answer, then stopped.
“Why were you canceling your other daughter’s wedding reservation three months before Karen was engaged?”
The question reached Karen before my answer could. She set her champagne down and stared at our father. I could see her working backward from the proposal to the promise of a room, then farther back to a decision in which she hadn’t taken part.
“January?” she asked me.
“January nineteenth.”
I didn’t need to make the date hurt more.
“He secured the room before Spencer proposed,” I said. “My wedding was in the way. He told you I gave it up. He told me there had been a mistake.”
Her eyes filled.
“He lied to both of us, Karen. He just told us different lies.”
She faced Dad.
“Tell me she’s wrong.”
He looked from her to Preston. Then, for the first time that morning, he raised his voice.
“Fine. Yes. I moved the reservation. The business was about to lose everything. The shop, the house. Everything I worked for. Preston’s investment was going to save us, and we needed a wedding people would remember.”
He pointed toward me.
“You were the one strong enough to handle it. That was a compliment, Nadia. I trusted you.”
Warren was still looking at the screen.
“There’s something else in the payment history.”
