Chapter 7: The Toast She Gave
The reception was beautiful in the way that expensive things are beautiful when everyone inside them is quietly terrified.
The centerpieces were white peonies and trailing ivy.
The champagne was cold.
The band played something soft and instrumental during the first course, and the hotel staff moved between tables with the practiced efficiency of people paid to be invisible.
Mabel sat at the head table beside me and refilled my water glass every time it dropped below half.
She didn't say much.
She didn't need to.
Drake's uncle — his father's younger brother, a man named Clifton who had driven four hours from Philadelphia and whom I had met only once before — stopped at our table between courses and shook Drake's hand for a long time without saying anything.
Then he looked at me.
"Your mother would be proud," he said.
I didn't trust my voice.
I nodded.
He patted my hand and went back to his table.
Eunice was seated at the family table, twelve feet away.
She ate.
She spoke to the guests around her.
She smiled when smiled at.
She was, by every visible measure, a gracious mother of the groom at her son's wedding reception.
I watched her the way you watch a weather system.
The toasts began after the main course.
Mabel went first — warm, funny, slightly tearful, exactly right.
She told a story about the time I had driven three hours in a snowstorm to help her move apartments and arrived with a casserole and a broken windshield wiper, and the room laughed, and Drake laughed, and for a moment it felt like a real wedding.
Then Drake's college roommate spoke.
Then a cousin on Drake's side who told a story about Drake at fourteen that made him cover his face.
Then Eunice stood up.
The room settled.
She lifted her glass.
She looked at Drake with an expression that was almost tender.
"My son," she said, "has always known his own mind.
Even as a boy.
Even when I disagreed with him." She paused.
"I have not always made things easy.
I know that." Another pause — perfectly timed.
"But everything I have ever done has been because I love him.
And because I love this family."
She turned to me.
"Giselle." Her voice was warm.
Practiced.
"Welcome to the Vance family."
She raised her glass.
The room raised theirs.
I raised mine.
And across the rim of my champagne flute, I watched Eunice slip her phone from her lap, glance at the screen, and type something with her thumb — one-handed, without looking down, the way people do when they've done it a thousand times.
She sent it before she set the phone away.
I looked at Drake.
He had seen it too.
"Who is she texting?" Mabel whispered.
I thought about Warren Pryce.
About the fourteen months of transfers.
About the authorization codes that matched his login but the instruction trail that led back to Eunice.
I thought about the fact that Warren Pryce had not been invited to this wedding.
And I thought about the server room at Vance Hospitality's main office, where the financial records I had spent six months documenting were stored on a system that Warren Pryce had full administrative access to.
May you like
"Drake," I said quietly.
He was already reaching for his phone.
