The Bride Without Her Veil
Chapter 05 - The Bride Without Her Veil
I checked the back door twice before bed, though I knew a lock would not protect me from the kind of trouble Linda meant. Mason was asleep. I left the hall light on and lay awake listening to the refrigerator cycle on and off. In the morning, I found three missed calls from Brittany Collins and a message saying she needed to talk without Jake.
For several minutes I stared at the screen. The last thing I wanted was a conversation with the woman who had laughed while my son defended me. Then I remembered her face when Mason mentioned the closing: not angry, exactly, but frightened. I suggested a coffee shop near the public library, somewhere the tables were too close together for anyone to make a scene.
Brittany arrived without her veil, her diamonds, or most of her confidence. She wore jeans and a white cardigan. There was a small blister on her heel from the wedding shoes. I disliked myself for noticing it. A woman can behave cruelly and still have painful feet.
“I'm sorry about the speech,” she began.
“Which part? The joke, or the part where you laughed?”
She looked at the table. “Both.”
The waitress brought our coffee. Brittany waited until she'd gone before speaking again. “My friend Dana thought it was funny. I should've stopped her.”
“Yes.”
“I know you think I'm awful.”
“I don't know you well enough to decide what you are. I know what you did.”
She flinched. Then she reached into her purse and took out a folded sheet of paper. It was a printout of a message from Jake to Caleb Collins, sent six weeks before the wedding. The subject line said MARIGOLD CLOSING — FUNDS CLEAR.
One sentence had been underlined: Once Sarah's waiver is confirmed, there should be no remaining claimant capable of challenging title.
“What does he mean?” I asked.
“I asked him. He told me you had taken a cash settlement after Daniel's death and were threatening to make trouble because you regretted it. He said Linda had documents.”
“And you believed him.”
“He was my fiancé.”
“That didn't answer the question.”
Brittany wrapped both hands around her cup. “I believed him because it was convenient.”
At last she was telling me something useful. Not the sort of apology that requests immediate forgiveness, but a fact about herself. She had grown up with a father who measured human worth by property, a mother who had perfected agreeing with him, and a future husband who knew how to sound sincere in a room full of people eager to believe him.
“Caleb is buying the building?” I said.
“Yes. Under one of his companies. He plans to clear the tenants and renovate. Jake says the property is worth much more without the old leases.”
“How much?”
“Four-point-six million. But that's not the number that matters.”
She slid over another page: a bank statement showing a transfer of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a Collins-controlled escrow account to a company called J.M. Advisory. The transfer had cleared before the wedding. I recognized Jake's initials.
“That was supposed to be a refundable advance against the sale,” she said. “Dad thought Jake needed to settle some obligations so title could clear. Jake said it was for subcontractors.”
“What were the obligations?”
“Gambling debts. Bad investments. I don't know anymore.”
I watched a mother near the window tear a muffin into pieces for her toddler. Four years ago, at the funeral reception, Jake had told me I was lucky to have Linda watching the family's business affairs. He said Daniel hadn't been much good with money, something I knew to be untrue but lacked the strength to correct. Now I wondered how many other people he'd made grateful for being cheated.
“Why show me this?”
“Because I heard him on the phone yesterday. He said your son was becoming a problem.”
My cup rattled against its saucer. “What exactly did he say?”
“He asked someone whether there was anything in your records that might convince a judge you were unfit. He mentioned your finances. Your hours. The fact that Mason sometimes goes to Evelyn after school.”
A hard little knot formed beneath my ribs. My income came from cleaning offices and doing books for two small businesses. Our electricity had been cut off once, briefly, during the winter after Daniel died. I wasn't proud of it, but poverty was not a crime, and no one had been kinder to Mason than Evelyn.
“Jake's his uncle,” I said. “He has no right to threaten me.”
“I know.”
“You didn't seem to know at the wedding.”
Brittany shut her eyes. “I was afraid everything was going to fall apart.”
“It is falling apart,” I said. “The question is what you intend to do while it does.”
Brittany rubbed the edge of her napkin until it began to shred. She said she had made a list of things she wanted to tell Jake when they got back from their honeymoon. At the top was a question about why the Marigold's tenants weren't mentioned in the glossy sales brochure. Below it she'd written, almost apologetically, Ask about Mason. She had torn the page from her planner before he could see it.
“You could have asked at the wedding,” I said.
“I could have done a lot of things.” She looked up. “When I was little, my mother told me never to contradict a man when his friends were watching. I thought I'd grown out of that. Apparently I'd just bought prettier dresses.”
I didn't tell her that a lesson learned early can take most of a lifetime to unlearn. I had my own proof of that. I only asked whether she was willing to let the lawyer see what she'd brought.
She didn't ask me to make her feel better. For that I gave her a little credit. She promised to send the original email and transfer records to Miriam, provided the lawyer explained how they'd be used. When we stood, she hesitated.
“There's something else. Jake told me Daniel died because he was driving too fast that night. But last week Linda said something different.”
I looked at her.
“She said if Daniel had stayed home, none of this would have happened. Jake said, ‘Don't start that again.’ Then they both went quiet.”
Daniel had died on a wet September night after leaving our house to meet Jake at the Marigold. The police report described his car leaving the road on a bend. There was no other vehicle involved. I had accepted the account because the officer spoke gently, and because I didn't understand how someone could ask for more details without having to hear the worst ones.
“What happened to my husband?” I asked.
Brittany's face went pale. “I don't know.”
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When I reached home, there was a voicemail from an unfamiliar number. It was a man's voice, older, with the careful diction of someone reading from a page.
“Mrs. Mitchell, my name is Dr. Arthur Bell. I treated your husband the night he died. I believe there's something in the hospital record you were never told.”
