Chapter 2 - He nodded.
“The independent committee ranked your proposal first in the clinical-impact category.”
“First?”
“Yes.”
I sat down on the bench beneath the window.
For years, my life had been measured in what I had not finished.
Medical school.
A marriage.
The bigger apartment I kept promising Lily.
The savings account I emptied every winter.
I had forgotten what it felt like for someone to say I had been chosen for something.
Sophia sat beside me.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“You could have told me.”
“I know.”
“Mom spent cocktail hour making me feel like I had failed at being single.”
Sophia winced.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“And Sandra put me beside the kitchen.”
“What?”
“Table Twelve.”
Sophia stared toward the ballroom.
“Jessica, Table Twelve was supposed to be for the hospital donors. Your name was on Table Four with Mom and me.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“I made the seating chart.”
“Then why was my place card there?”
“I don’t know.”
Giovanni spoke quietly.
“I do.”
We both looked at him.
“Your card was moved approximately twenty minutes before dinner.”
“How would you know that?”
“The banquet manager told me there had been a seating problem when I arrived. I own a minority interest in the Bellmont. Staff tend to tell me problems whether I ask or not.”
Sophia stood.
“Who moved it?”
Giovanni shook his head.
“I didn’t ask.”
My first thought was Vanessa.
Then Sandra.
Then Tyler.
Each suspicion embarrassed me as soon as it appeared.
“I’m not starting a wedding investigation,” I said.
“Good,” Sophia replied. “Because I’m still wearing the dress.”
That finally made me smile.
She hugged me.
“Stay.”
“I was planning to. Lily needs cake.”
“There are three extra tiers downstairs. Take an entire box.”
Sophia hurried back toward the reception after someone called her name.
Giovanni remained.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I said, “Were you planning to tell me about the fellowship before or after making me your secret wife?”
“Before.”
“How romantic.”
“I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”
“Good.”
“Although I admit the sequence has become difficult to defend.”
I looked toward the river.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Did you vote for me?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“I chair the foundation, but I don’t score applications. I read the finalists after the committee submits rankings.”
“So you didn’t choose me.”
“No.”
The relief I felt was stronger than expected.
“And now that you’ve met me?”
“The process remains independent.”
“Even after tonight?”
“Especially after tonight.”
I studied him.
For the first time, Giovanni Fierro looked almost uncomfortable.
“Why did Sophia want us to meet?”
“She thought I could answer questions about the fellowship.”
“That’s all?”
His hesitation was barely visible.
“That is what she said.”
“And what did you think?”
“I thought your proposal was practical.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Careful. You’ll overwhelm me.”
He smiled.
“I thought it came from someone who understands that families often need help after the crisis is over, when everyone else assumes life has returned to normal.”
Something in my chest tightened.
That was exactly why I had written it.
Not because of one dramatic moment.
Because of all the quiet ones afterward.
The unpaid parking tickets.
The medication schedules.
The parents afraid to admit they were confused.
The children trying to return to school.
“I didn’t know anyone understood that part,” I said.
“I did.”
Before I could ask why, Tyler appeared at the end of the corridor.
He stopped when he saw Giovanni.
“Jessica, can I speak to you?”
My shoulders stiffened.
Giovanni looked at me.
“Do you want me to stay?”
The question mattered.
Not I’ll stay.
Not I should stay.
Do you want me to.
“No,” I said. “But thank you.”
Giovanni nodded and walked toward the ballroom.
Tyler waited until he was gone.
“So that’s real?”
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Excuse me?”
“It was ridiculous wedding theater. Nothing more.”
Tyler gave a short laugh.
“That guy doesn’t seem like someone who does ridiculous.”
“You’d be surprised.”
He leaned against the window frame.
For once, he did not look smug.
He looked tired.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said earlier.”
“No.”
“I mean it.”
I waited.
“I was nervous,” he continued.
“About what?”
“Seeing you.”
“That’s a poor excuse.”
“I know.”
He looked down the corridor toward Vanessa.
“She thinks I’ve been carrying guilt about you for years.”
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
The answer was quiet.
I had spent five years wanting it.
Now that I had it, I did not know what to do with it.
“Why now, Tyler?”
“Because I’m about to become a father.”
“You already are.”
His face changed.
“Yes.”
The anger I had been holding cooled into something more complicated.
He rubbed his hands together.
“I don’t expect anything tonight. I just wanted to ask whether, someday, I could write to Lily.”
I stared at him.
“Write?”
“A letter. Nothing dramatic. No promises. You can read it first. If you think she shouldn’t see it, she doesn’t.”
The old Tyler would have demanded.
Argued.
Made the conversation about what he deserved.
This Tyler seemed to know he deserved very little.
“I need time.”
“I know.”
“And Vanessa?”
“She knows I’m asking.”
That surprised me.
Tyler reached into his jacket.
For half a second I tensed, until he produced a small cream envelope.
He did not hand it to me.
He merely held it.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“You should talk to your mother.”
I frowned.
“About what?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“About the letters I sent after Lily was born.”
The corridor seemed suddenly very quiet.
“What letters?”
Tyler went pale.
“You never got them?”
“No.”
He stared at me as though he had just realized we had spent five years living inside two different versions of the same story.
“I sent three,” he said.
My voice came out softer than I intended.
“To where?”
“To your mother’s house.”
I thought of the year after Lily was born, when I had moved home for six months.
The mail stacked on the hallway table.
My mother sorting bills.
My father still alive then, insisting I sleep while he walked Lily around the living room at two in the morning.
“I never saw any letters.”
Tyler looked genuinely shaken.
“I thought you returned them.”
“I didn’t.”
He opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
From the ballroom, guests began cheering as Sophia and Ethan prepared to cut their cake.
I looked toward the sound.
Then back at the envelope in Tyler’s hand.
May you like
Five years ago, I had believed Tyler disappeared without a single word.
Now, on my sister’s wedding night, I had learned that at least three words—or perhaps three entire letters—had existed somewhere between us.
