Chapter 11 - The Dress Fitting

For forty-eight hours, I considered telling Emily everything and asking her to cancel the wedding.

But evidence wasn't the same as certainty. I wouldn't replace the Whitmores' manipulation with my own. She deserved the facts, not an ultimatum.

I met her during her final dress fitting. She stood on a platform beneath soft white lights, the lace train spilling around her like sea foam.

“You look beautiful,” I said.

She glanced at my reflection. “You look tired.”

“I'm more stubborn than tired.”

We both smiled, but only briefly.

“Daniel says you've been meeting private investigators.”

“Ruth is my friend.”

“Please don't embarrass us at the wedding.”

Those words landed hard.

“Is that what you think I want?”

“No. I don't know what to think anymore.”

I drew a breath. “Your father found unsafe construction work. He reported it. There are recordings that suggest powerful people tried to silence him. Daniel's family may have been involved.”

Emily's eyes shone.

“Why didn't you tell me sooner?”

“Because I wanted to verify it before tearing apart your life.”

She stepped down and embraced me, careful of the tenderness around my chemotherapy port.

“I love you,” she whispered. “But I need to hear Daniel's side.”

“Then ask for it without me in the room.”

As I left the salon, I saw Daniel's car parked across the street. Emily walked toward it with her dress bag, already calling his name.

Through the open window, I heard him say, “If she shows you anything, bring it to me first.”

Emily stopped walking.

For the first time, she sounded afraid of him.

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“Why would you need to see it before I do?”

The seamstress quietly pretended to reorganize pins while Emily and I argued. Later, as I gathered my coat, she slipped me a tissue and murmured, 'My mother and I had a fight the week before I married. We made up, but I wish I'd listened sooner.' I didn't ask what happened. I carried her words out into the afternoon and wondered how many parents and daughters across the city were standing on opposite sides of the same impossible fear.