The hotel receipts were the last piece. When I’d called the hotel weeks earlier, pretending to check on a reservation, the clerk had told me politely that the room was billed to a different card than the one on our account. Daniel’s card had only paid for a few dinners in the hotel restaurant. Brooke had told him they were “investor meetings.”
The room itself had always been paid for by someone else.
Hannah had found out whose card it was.
She’d handed me a plain envelope at the end of our last meeting. Her hands had been shaking.
“I hope I’m wrong,” she’d whispered.
She wasn’t.
That afternoon, I bought a black wooden box with a hinged lid from a little gift shop on Main Street. One by one, I placed everything inside. A handwritten card on top. The framed photo underneath. A folder of documents beneath that.
Then I stopped.
There was one last thing still lying on the table.
I looked at it for a long time. Then I picked it up carefully, slid it into a plain white envelope, and tucked it beneath everything else.
I closed the lid. I tied a wide cream ribbon into a perfect bow.
And for the first time in six months, I smiled for real.
For illustrative purposes only
Part Seven: Happy Birthday, Brooke
The Saturday of the party arrived warm and bright.
Brooke’s backyard looked exactly the way she’d planned it. Two long folding tables stretched across the lawn under white tablecloths, decorated with tiny pumpkins she’d insisted were “classy, not tacky.” String lights hung from the oak tree. Thirty-two relatives filled every chair. Greg had even flown home from Houston for the occasion.
I walked in carrying the casserole I’d been assigned. Daniel followed behind me with a bouquet of yellow roses.
“Claire!” Brooke beamed and kissed the air beside my cheek. “And you made the potato salad too!”
“I never forget my assignments.”
“I knew I could count on you.”
“You always have.”
She smiled warmly, completely missing what I meant.
The afternoon went the way every family gathering went. People ate too much. Kids chased each other across the grass. Richard stood at the grill in his apron, turning burgers, while Brooke drifted from table to table collecting compliments like birthday cards. Upstairs, Daniel’s mother sat by her bedroom window looking down at all of us.
Then someone tapped a fork against a glass.
“Presents! Presents!”
Brooke laughed and pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh, you guys really didn’t have to!”
She opened scented candles. A cashmere sweater. Gift cards. A cookbook she already owned, which got a big laugh around the table.
Then she reached for my black wooden box.
“Ooh, fancy,” she said, tugging the ribbon loose. “Claire, you shouldn’t have.”
She lifted the lid.
