Chapter 6: What the Night Cost
Tyler came back eleven minutes later.
He sat down next to Megan without a word.
He poured himself a glass of water.
He picked up his fork.
He did not eat anything, but he held the fork, and that seemed to be enough for the room to collectively release a breath and return to the business of pretending to have a good time.
Mom appeared at my side again.
"What happened in the corridor?"
"He talked to Marcus.
Marcus left."
She closed her eyes briefly.
"Thank God."
"Don't thank God yet," I said.
"Tyler paid for dinner and came back and sat down, and those are both decent signs, but this is not over."
"He loves her," Mom said.
Quietly.
Like a statement she was asking me to confirm.
"Probably," I said.
"That doesn't fix it."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I should have handled this differently," she said.
I looked at her.
"Not tonight," she said.
"Earlier.
When I suspected.
I should have talked to her instead of — instead of just hoping it would resolve itself."
It was the most honest thing Mom had said in a room that I was also present in for possibly several years.
I didn't point that out.
"You could still talk to her," I said.
"She said not yet."
"She said that to me.
Not to you."
Mom straightened slightly.
Looked toward the head table.
Looked back at me.
Then she picked up her wine glass and walked across the room, and I watched her sit down on the other side of Megan, and say something close to her ear, and Megan's shoulders — which had been rigid since she sat back down — moved in a way that was not quite relaxing but was something adjacent to it.
Sofia materialized beside me.
"Dessert in twenty minutes," she said.
"Do you want the full dessert service or the abbreviated?"
"Full," I said.
She looked at me with an expression that asked whether I was sure, given the evening.
"These people have had a strange night," I said.
"Give them the good dessert."
She almost smiled.
"Yes, Chef."
The cake cutting happened.
Someone had apparently decided it was going to happen regardless, because the wedding coordinator appeared with a kind of resolute professionalism that I deeply respected, and Megan and Tyler stood at the cake table and held the knife together and the photographer took the picture.
Their hands touched on the handle.
For a moment — just a moment — Tyler looked at her.
Not with anger.
Not with forgiveness either.
With something more complicated than both.
She looked back at him.
She didn't smile for the photo.
Neither did he.
The photographer took the picture anyway.
The cake was served.
People ate it.
The band, who had been playing through the entire evening with the focused commitment of professionals getting paid regardless of circumstances, shifted into something slower, and two of Tyler's friends from college pulled him onto the dance floor and made enough noise about it that he went, and the moment became something that looked almost normal from the outside.
I sat alone at the family table with the remains of a dinner that had started as a lesson and somewhere in the last three hours had become something else entirely.
My phone lit up.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*This is Tyler.
Sofia gave me your number.
I want to talk tomorrow.
Not about the bill.
About something else.
Are you available?*
I read it twice.
Then I typed back: *Yes.*
The reply came in under ten seconds.
*Thank you.
There's something about your family I think you should know.
Something Megan told me before the wedding that I haven't told anyone.*
I set the phone down on the table.
Looked at the dance floor, where Tyler was moving through the motions of a man at his own wedding reception.
Looked at Megan, who was watching him from the head table with an expression I couldn't read from this distance.
May you like
I picked the phone back up.
*What time?* I typed.
