Chapter 1
“The engagement ends here.”
Nobody moved.
Marcella stared at me as though she had misheard.
Nell’s fingers tightened around mine.
That decided everything that remained undecided.
“Alistair.”
Marcella tried to smile.
Not the warm smile she used during private dinners.
The reception smile.
Measured.
Photogenic.
Controlled.
“Don’t humiliate both of us over a tantrum.”
I looked down.
Nell immediately pressed herself against my leg.
Not tantrum.
Fear.
I crouched.
“What happens when you don’t smile?”
Her eyes moved toward the torn cardboard halves on the carpet.
“She uses picture.”
My gaze lifted.
“What does that mean?”
Marcella stepped forward.
“She’s four.”
“Yes.”
I kept my voice low.
“That means I will give her time to answer.”
Nell pointed toward the photo backdrop.
“If I cry, I go behind.”
The ballroom became quieter.
“How many times?”
She held up one hand.
Then the other.
Lost count.
My chest tightened.
Marcella laughed brittlely.
“She hates photographs. Every child does.”
Nell shook her head.
“No.”
Then:
“I like pictures with Daddy.”
There.
Not photographs.
Marcella’s photographs.
I looked at the phone still in my former fiancée’s hand.
She noticed.
Her fingers closed around it.
Interesting.
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
First honest answer of the evening.
I stood.
“Why?”
“It’s private.”
“So was my daughter.”
Her face changed.
Nell suddenly tugged my hand.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“She sends happy Nell.”
I went still.
“To whom?”
Nell pointed around the ballroom.
“Everybody.”
Several guests looked at one another.
An older capo near the champagne table lowered his glass.
Then Nell added:
“Even when real Nell in little room.”
I looked back at the cardboard photograph.
The same smiling face that had greeted every guest tonight.
Marcella had not invented the display for this reception.
It was part of something older.
A substitute.
A version of my child that never cried, objected, asked for me, or embarrassed anyone.
May you like
And judging by the way half the ballroom suddenly avoided my eyes—
far more people had seen “happy Nell” than I had realized.
