Chapter 2 - THE WIDOWER WHO WASN’T A WIDOWER
Ryan’s bride was named Claire Bennett.
I knew that before I entered the ballroom.
What I hadn’t known was what Ryan had told her about me.
Claire stepped down from the small raised platform.
“Who is she?”
Ryan answered immediately.
“My ex-wife.”
Claire stared at him.
“Your dead ex-wife?”
Nobody laughed.
Ryan loosened his bow tie.
“It’s complicated.”
I nearly did.
Eleven months of missing my daughter.
Eight months of returned letters.
Six months of legal filings.
And Ryan had reduced it to complicated.
Claire looked at me.
“You’re Emily?”
“Yes.”
“He told me you died after you left Connecticut.”
“I’m very much alive.”
Lily was still behind James.
She hadn’t run to me.
That hurt worse than Ryan’s words.
I crouched several feet away.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
She pressed herself against James.
“You’re not real.”
I couldn’t breathe.
James knelt beside her.
“Lily, remember who I told you I was talking to?”
She looked at him.
Her eyes moved back to me.
Ryan stepped between us.
“This is exactly why she shouldn’t be here.”
I stood.
“Move.”
“Emily—”
“Move away from my daughter.”
Claire’s father finally spoke.
“Ryan, what the hell is happening?”
Ryan turned toward him.
“Emily disappeared last year. She abandoned Lily.”
“That’s a lie.”
I opened the burgundy envelope.
Inside were copies of certified letters.
Every one addressed to Ryan.
Every one asking for contact with Lily.
Every one returned.
Some marked refused.
Some unclaimed.
One had Ryan’s own signature on the delivery record.
I handed Claire the top page.
Ryan reached for it.
Claire stepped back.
She read the date.
Then looked at Ryan.
“You said nobody had heard from her.”
Ryan’s face tightened.
“She was unstable.”
There it was.
The word he had used whenever my choices became inconvenient.
Unstable.
Emotional.
Unsafe.
Never angry for a reason.
Never frightened because of something he had done.
Just unstable.
Claire lowered the page.
“Did you tell Lily her mother was dead?”
Ryan didn’t answer.
Lily did.
“Daddy said Mommy went to heaven.”
The ballroom changed around us.
Because children do not understand legal strategies.
May you like
They just repeat what adults teach them.
And Ryan had apparently taught our daughter to grieve a living woman.
