Chapter 12 - THE DINNER WITHOUT A WEDDING
Diane invited both daughters to her house.
Megan refused twice.
Sophie asked once.
Megan agreed.
No Martin.
No lawyers.
No Beacon.
Just the three Collins women at the dining table where Megan and Sophie once did homework under Diane’s supervision.
Diane had cooked roast chicken.
Nobody ate much.
Megan placed a copy of one old email on the table.
Thomas Hail to Diane Collins:
Your daughter is bright, but she will ruin herself if she cannot learn that businesses require compromise.
Diane looked at it.
“I remember.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he contacted you?”
Diane smoothed the napkin beside her plate.
“Because you were already falling apart.”
“I was twenty-seven.”
“Exactly.”
Megan laughed without humor.
“What does that mean?”
“You lost your job. Jason left. You moved home. Every conversation became an argument.”
“So you decided Thomas was right.”
Diane’s eyes hardened defensively.
“He was successful.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
“Mom.”
Diane snapped, “Don’t start pretending status means nothing to either of you. Sophie married Martin partly because she liked the life he represented.”
Sophie did not deny it.
“That doesn’t make you right.”
Diane looked suddenly tired.
Megan asked the question that mattered.
“Why did you pay me not to come?”
Diane’s first answer was the old one.
“I wanted Sophie’s wedding peaceful.”
Megan waited.
Diane’s shoulders lowered.
“And I was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of Thomas seeing you.”
There it was.
“Why?”
Diane looked at Megan.
“Because if you walked into that room successful, then I had spent ten years being wrong.”
Silence settled over the table.
Not the theatrical silence of a reception hall.
The ordinary kind.
Refrigerator humming.
Heat ticking in the baseboards.
Megan felt more anger at that confession than she had at the five hundred dollars.
Diane had not protected Sophie.
She had protected herself from revision.
“You needed me to stay failed,” Megan said.
Diane started crying.
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I know.”
That was the problem.
Sophie spoke next.
“And you needed me to marry someone who proved your version of success was right.”
Diane looked between her daughters.
May you like
For once there was no socially acceptable answer available.
She had to sit inside what she had built.
