Chapter 2 - Blaire Had Already Put It in Writing
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
The chandelier hummed faintly overhead.
A drop of dressing slid from Blaire’s hair onto the shoulder of her gown.
Wesley finally stood.
“What did you sign?”
The question came too quickly.
Not:
Are you okay?
Not:
What are you talking about?
“What did you sign?”
Blaire looked at him.
That reaction confirmed something she had suspected all morning.
He was afraid of paper.
Of permanence.
Of something that could not later be reworded at a family dinner.
Lenora stepped around the chair.
“Blaire, whatever ridiculous thing you’ve done, we can discuss it privately.”
“No.”
Lenora’s expression hardened.
“This is a family matter.”
“That sentence is why I signed it.”
Wesley moved closer.
“What is it?”
Blaire picked up her phone from beside her napkin.
“A sworn statement.”
Lenora’s face changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
Wesley stared at her.
“A statement about what?”
“About the last eight months.”
His voice sharpened.
“To who?”
Blaire did not answer immediately.
She walked toward the far end of the table, putting distance between herself and both of them.
“This morning I met with an advocate and an attorney. I documented every time your mother threatened me, grabbed me, blocked a doorway, took my phone during an argument, and told me I needed to be ‘corrected.’”
Lenora scoffed.
“Dramatic nonsense.”
Blaire looked at her reddened cheek.
“Good timing.”
Wesley lowered his voice.
“You went to a lawyer without telling me?”
Blaire almost laughed.
“You watched your mother shove my face into dinner.”
“That got out of hand.”
“No. It went exactly as far as you thought I would tolerate.”
Wesley’s jaw tightened.
“What did you ask them to do?”
That was the more revealing question.
Blaire met his stare.
“They contacted Natalie Pierce.”
Everything changed.
Lenora’s hand tightened around the back of a chair.
Wesley went completely still.
Blaire saw it.
“Natalie,” she repeated.
Wesley recovered first.
“My ex-fiancée has nothing to do with our marriage.”
“Then why did your face change?”
“It didn’t.”
Lenora cut in.
“Natalie was unstable.”
Blaire looked at her.
“That’s exactly what Wesley told me.”
Neither answered.
Blaire had heard that description for years.
Natalie was unstable.
Natalie was dramatic.
Natalie embarrassed Wesley.
Natalie disappeared six weeks before their wedding because she could not handle becoming part of the family.
Blaire had accepted it because she never met the woman.
Then three days earlier, she found something tucked inside an old etiquette book in the mansion library.
A note.
No date.
No envelope.
Only six handwritten lines.
The first began:
If Lenora tells you dinner is about manners, leave.
The last said:
And if Wesley smiles while she humiliates you, understand that he is not trapped between you. He chose a side before you entered the room.
Signed:
Natalie.
That note was why Blaire spent yesterday searching for Natalie.
It was why she sat in an attorney’s office this morning.
And it was why a woman she had never met had agreed to take a phone call after almost nine years of silence.
Wesley looked toward the library doors.
“You found the note.”
Not a question.
Blaire’s pulse changed.
He knew it existed.
“You knew she left something here.”
May you like
Wesley said nothing.
And suddenly Blaire understood that Natalie’s disappearance from this family had never been as simple as anyone told her.
