“Decision? What decision?”
“To permit your father to do his fatherly duty and attend your wedding.” She turned to draw my attention to a framed needlework on the hallway wall. It was a quote from Alexander Pope sewn in black thread on a milk-white background. She read it aloud. “ ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine.’ ”
I nodded. It was as I had thought it would be. Daddy would come gracefully into all of their lives, charming them so quickly and completely that they would wonder how things could have grown so bad between us in the first place. It would soon come to the point where if I ignored and avoided him or slighted him in any way, I would look like the bad one. Insidiously, he would thread his way into the lives of anyone who had grown close to me there, his friendship clearly a double-edged sword, for I knew that he could wipe any of them out of existence. Every relative’s or friend’s hand he shook, every woman’s cheek he kissed, would be a marker indicating to whom or where he would return in his most vicious and volatile way. He would greet everyone but slide a smile toward me to remind me of his power.
“I’ll do my best,” I told them.
“It will all go well,” Mrs. McGruder insisted, stepping forward to squeeze my hand gently.
“In the end, we all depend upon our families,” Mrs. Winston added. “Blood is thicker than water.”
She had no idea how true that was for my family. I nodded and went up to my room, moving now like someone waiting for the second shoe to drop, the lightning bolt to strike, and the earth to quake under my feet, sending me hurrying back into Daddy’s arms and the life I had hoped to avoid. Practically every night, I reconsidered fleeing but always came to the same conclusion. If they could find me here, they could find me anywhere. It wasn’t simply the announcement in the social news, for I had seen Ava before that appeared, and either someone from Daddy’s clan or another living in the vicinity already had sent me a sharp, nearly deadly warning with the accident Jim and I were forced into having that night. Meeting the elderly man on the plane was no accident. I knew I was being shadowed, followed, and watched from the moment I had left Buddy and stepped into Moses’s tractor-trailer, and in my heart of hearts, I knew I would always be on their radar.
In the days that followed, Mr. Dolan began to inform me when Daddy sent money to pay for things. They had apparently had a number of conversations about the arrangements. At just about every family gathering now, which included Mrs. Wakefield, Ken Dolan mentioned my father and his eagerness to see me whenever I would agree. I was always asked if I hadn’t already spoken to him on the phone. I said no but added that it would be better for us to meet right before the wedding. A few days later, Mr. Dolan informed me that he was organizing the rehearsal dinner at one of the fanciest restaurants in Quincy. It was planned for the evening before our wedding. He had booked its private room. Besides the family, there were some of his business associates and their wives attending.
“People who watched Liam grow up,” he told me. “And some of the people who work at the company, like Michael Thomas.”
By now, he felt like an old friend to me, too. He was always there in the morning to pick me up if Liam was away and always there to volunteer to take me home if I wanted a ride. He loved talking about his family, and I loved listening.
“I wasn’t sure if there was anyone you wanted to invite,” Mr. Dolan continued. “I mean, aside from your father and his wife, you have no other guests on your end, and—”
“No, no one,” I said quickly. “I mean, I’m sure Mrs. McGruder is invited to everything.”
“Oh, absolutely. She and my aunt are attached at the hip.”
“They are,” I said, smiling.
“Neither your father nor you have mentioned any relatives. I know traveling to a wedding is always a burden, but . . .”
“No. There is no one I was close enough to whom I would want at the wedding. My father knows that.”
“Okay,” he said, looking sad and concerned. “We’ll be the family you never had.”
The subject was dropped, but then he finally asked me about the disappearance of Collin Nickels. Mrs. Winston was still talking about it.
“My aunt’s obviously very disturbed. I looked into the police investigation myself, but there are no leads. Did you know him at all?”
“No,
” I said.
“As long as it isn’t upsetting you, then,” he added.
I assured him that it wasn’t. I told him I felt sorry for the man’s family, but I repeated that I didn’t know him well enough to be emotionally involved.
“Right. Well, so much goes on that we will never understand.”
“Yes, so much,” I repeated, a little more emphatically than he expected.
We dropped that subject, too. Every day, however, I anticipated Ava’s sudden appearance, with her confident smile. I searched every shadow, studied every woman who walked anywhere near me or near Liam and me when we were out. I was particularly nervous about it when Julia accompanied me to my wedding-dress fitting. I noticed something brighter in her eyes and a rosy flush in her cheeks when she came by to pick me up. She drove off with the impish smile of a cat that had swallowed a canary.
“What?” I asked.
She looked at me and widened her eyes. “You’re obviously distracted this morning,” she said. “Usually, you’re more observant.”
“What . . .” I gasped when I saw her engagement ring.
The look on my face made her laugh. She had to pull over to the side of the road, and we hugged.