Chapter 8

Back then Richard hadn't had much money, and neither had Josephine's side of the family, though their family name carried weight.

Most of the wedding — the reception, the catering, the band — had been paid for out of Josephine's own account. The brownstone they lived in after the wedding was hers.

Those early years had been happy. He'd thought at the time that meeting Josephine was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

Somewhere along the way, that had rotted into this. How?

While Richard was drifting in memory, the ceremony had moved to the parents.

Ethan and Caroline, hand in hand, smiling, approached him and Vivienne.

"Caroline, this is my dad, and this is my mom. Go ahead — you can call them."

Vivienne already had the box in her lap — a pearl choker that had been in her family, she'd say later, passing it to Caroline the second she heard the word Mom.

Vivienne, at twenty, had insisted she'd never marry. Freedom, she'd said, is more important than companionship.

The older she got, the heavier that freedom became.

Richard couldn't always be with her. He had a family.

But she had a son. She did. Even if he didn't know.

Even if the woman her son would call Mom first had never been her.

Today, finally, it would be her. Her face shone with it.

Then, right as Caroline's mouth opened —

"No —"

Richard was on his feet.

Ethan stared, then rushed to push him back down into the chair. "Dad, what the hell? Is it Caroline? Do you not approve?"

Ethan's face was white with panic.

Caroline's face had gone confused.

Vivienne, after forty years of knowing Richard, understood in half a second what he was looking at. She'd caught him scanning the entrance of the ballroom, like he still hoped Josephine might appear.

Vivienne grabbed his arm. Her voice was small and fierce and pleading.

"Josephine isn't coming. You promised me. You said you'd let me hear him call me Mom."

"You promised. We're this far already. Don't do this to me now."

Her fingers dug into his sleeve hard enough to bruise.

He felt like she was holding a thousand pounds in her grip.

Ethan's face. Caroline's face.

Two hundred guests, all of them staring. Expectant. Curious. Blessing them.

There was no backing out.

If he didn't let Ethan call Vivienne Mom now, Caroline would sense something was wrong.

And the whispers — he'd already told the relatives, on the quiet, that Josephine couldn't make it. Family emergency. He'd used that phrase.

The looks they'd given him.

Anyone who knew him knew Josephine was his wife of forty years. What kind of "emergency" kept the mother of the groom away from her only son's wedding? And why, if she was ill, had he replaced her in the ceremony with another woman?

They all knew. Everyone in that room on his side of the aisle knew.

They were just too polite, too conflict-averse, to ruin a wedding.

Caroline's side didn't know any of it. They were strangers who had been handed a beautifully printed program.

Richard closed his eyes and sat back down.

Ethan mumbled something to Caroline. Some quick excuse. She let it go.

The ceremony continued.

And Vivienne heard Ethan and Caroline say the word she had wanted for thirty years.

Mom.