Chapter 4 - Preston Came to My House Without His Ring On
Preston showed up at my front door the next afternoon.
No security.
No lawyer.
No bride.
Just him—still in yesterday’s wrinkled gray suit pants, a dark sweater thrown on top, and a look on his face that had aged him five years overnight.
He noticed the ice pack on Elisa’s cheek immediately.
That was the first thing he looked at.
Not me.
Not my expression.
My child.
“I’m here to apologize for what happened to her,” he said.
I didn’t invite him in right away.
“What part?” I asked. “The part where your bride slapped my daughter? Or the part where you tried to take my head off after?”
He swallowed hard.
“I didn’t know what I was looking at.”
“That makes two of us.”
Still, I let him in.
We sat across from each other in my living room while Elisa watched cartoons in the den, close enough for me to hear her but far enough not to hear him.
Preston placed a folded copy of the prenatal report on the table between us.
“I had it verified,” he said quietly. “It’s real.”
“And the photo?”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“I called Harbor Crest. They wouldn’t say much, but they confirmed the still came from hallway security footage taken the night of the Barrett gala.”
My chest tightened.
“So you believe I was there.”
“I believe you were on that floor.”
That was more than I wanted.
He looked ashamed then, but not only because of the wedding. Because he had spent the entire morning talking to Lucinda, and whatever she had told him hadn’t settled anything.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“That you were obsessed with her. That you approached her months ago. That someone is trying to extort her.”
I laughed once. Not because anything was funny.
“Do you believe that?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Finally, he said, “I believed her yesterday. I don’t know what I believe now.”
There it was.
The first honest thing either of us had heard since the arch came down.
Then he reached into his pocket and set his own phone on the table.
“There’s something else,” he said. “My wedding planner told me a little girl saw Lucinda hiding something in that vase before the ceremony.”
I stared at him.
A little girl.
Elisa.
Suddenly I understood why my daughter had looked so confused before the slap.
She hadn’t just broken a vase.
May you like
She had knocked open the exact place Lucinda thought no one would look.
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