Chapter 5 - FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS ONLY.
Andrew printed the two schedules at work before his first meeting on Monday.
He did not show them around. He put them in a plain folder, checked that the printer queue was empty, and sat at his desk until the urge to call Vanessa had passed. He needed to ask a question. He didn't need to ask it while he was ready to shout.
Daniel stopped at the doorway with two coffees.
“Brought you the decent one,” he said.
“There are decent ones?”
“Relatively.”
Andrew accepted it. Daniel stayed standing.
“I've been thinking about what I said.”
“Which part?”
“Getting through the ceremony.”
Andrew waited.
“That was wrong.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at the folder. “Is that about Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to do anything?”
“Stop forwarding explanations that describe my daughter as the problem.”
“I only sent it so you'd know.”
“I know. I'm talking about what you say to other people.”
Daniel's face changed just enough. Andrew noticed, but the meeting reminder sounded before he could ask about it. They left the conversation there. It was a working day. People still needed decisions from him about things that had nothing to do with a wedding.
At lunch, he called Vanessa from his car.
“Why was Emily removed from the processional?”
“I wondered when Claire would send that.”
“Why?”
“We were behind schedule.”
“By how much?”
“It wasn't just the time.”
He looked through the windshield at a man struggling to fit a long cardboard box into a small hatchback. Ordinary problems continued everywhere. He found that almost insulting.
“Then tell me the other reason.”
Vanessa sighed. “She wasn't comfortable. I didn't want to force her.”
“Did she tell you she didn't want to walk?”
“You know how she gets when people watch her.”
“I know she practiced in our hallway.”
Vanessa said nothing for a moment. Andrew realized she might not remember the practice at all. She had been answering vendor emails at the table while he and Emily made their small procession between the couch and the kitchen. He had thought of it as a family evening because all three had been in the apartment. Now he remembered calling Vanessa over to watch and accepting her answer that she would in a minute. The minute had passed. That memory didn't establish what she intended on the wedding day. It did remind him that being in the same room was a poor substitute for sharing an experience. He had been generous in counting togetherness when he wanted the count to come out right.
The practice had been awkward and sweet. Emily had used a grocery bag instead of a basket and dropped folded scraps of paper onto the runner. Andrew had pretended to be several guests by moving between chairs. She had told him his aunt impression was terrible, though he had not been impersonating anyone in particular.
He had been there for that. It wasn't somebody else's account.
“Practicing isn't the same as doing it,” Vanessa said.
“Then why didn't you ask me?”
“Because you were busy, and I thought I could handle one thing without asking permission.”
“You changed my daughter's place in our wedding.”
“She was still in the photographs.”
Andrew looked at the printed line on the passenger seat. Family photographs only. He imagined Emily being brought out after the vows to provide visible proof of a happy family she hadn't been allowed to help form.
That image was his interpretation. He knew it. He wanted to accuse Vanessa of designing exactly that picture, but wanting to say something didn't make it established.
“Did you tell the staff to keep her in the laundry room?”
“I said she should wait.”
“Did you lock the door?”
“I am not doing this over the phone.”
It wasn't an answer. It also wasn't an admission. He wrote down both distinctions after the call.
Vanessa sent a time for him to collect their belongings: Wednesday, ten to eleven. He replied that Emily needed school clothes and her night-light sooner. Vanessa answered that she would leave one bag on the porch that evening.
He stared at the word one.
Most of his own possessions could wait. He could work in the same two shirts, eat from mismatched plates, and rebuild a life from cardboard. Emily needed to know her belongings had not become prizes adults handed out for cooperation.
He sent a short list. Pajamas. School clothes. Blue sweatshirt. Library book. Night-light. Please include the things on this list, he wrote. We can arrange the rest separately.
After school, Emily asked whether he had told her teacher.
“Only that we had a difficult weekend and you're back at the apartment. I asked her to talk with me privately if you need anything.”
“Did you say laundry room?”
“No.”
She considered that. “Okay.”
He drove to Vanessa's house while Emily stayed at the after-school program for the hour already booked. A single shopping bag sat beside the front door. Andrew recognized the store logo. He had once felt underdressed walking into that store with Vanessa. Now it held his child's toothpaste.
He checked the contents without stepping beyond the porch. Clothes. Book. Sweatshirt. No night-light.
He texted Vanessa. She opened the door a minute later, holding it in her hand.
“I couldn't find the plug.”
“It's attached.”
She looked down. “Right.”
Neither moved.
Without the wedding dress, she looked tired and ordinary. He could see the woman who used to bring him coffee without asking, the woman who remembered which parking garage made him late. Knowing those things about her made none of this simpler.
“We could talk,” she said.
“Wednesday.”
“You really won't come inside?”
“Not today.”
She handed him the light. “I didn't mean for it to become this.”
He waited, but she didn't say what this had been meant to become.
Back at the apartment, Emily plugged in the night-light herself. Then she emptied the bag, laying each item on her bed. At the bottom she found a cream-colored envelope.
Her name was written across it in Vanessa's careful handwriting.
“Is this for me?”
Andrew looked at the envelope. “It has your name on it.”
May you like
Emily held it toward him instead of opening it.
“Will you read it first?”
