Vivian glanced between us.
“I still can’t believe you kept this secret.”
Clare opened her mouth, but Lauren answered first.
“Maybe there was a reason.”
Silence settled over the table.
I knew that tone too.
Lauren had used it throughout our relationship whenever she wanted to make a criticism sound like concern.
“What reason would that be?” I asked.
She smiled at me.
“I just hope Clare isn’t confusing comfort with compatibility.
Marcus is very dependable.”
Dependable.
She made the word sound like a consolation prize.
Years ago, it would have irritated me.
Now I only watched Clare.
Her face had gone still.
Evan leaned back, sensing an opening.
“That’s what I was wondering,” he said.
“Clare can get swept up in things when she’s trying to prove a point.”
Clare pulled her hand from beneath mine.
For one second, I thought she was retreating.
Then she placed both palms flat on the table.
“You left me for someone else,” she said to Evan.
“You don’t get to diagnose what I do afterward.”
His smile vanished.
No one spoke.
Clare turned to Lauren.
“And Marcus being dependable isn’t an insult.
It means when he says he’ll show up, he does.
It means he listens when people speak.
It means he doesn’t make kindness sound like a lack of ambition.”
Lauren’s expression changed.
I stared at Clare.
She was defending me using the same things she had asked me to fake for her.
Only nothing about her voice sounded fake.
Vivian cleared her throat.
“Well.”
Aunt Marcy quietly buttered a piece of toast as though she had purchased front-row seats.
Evan tried one more time.
“Clare, nobody is attacking you.”
She looked at him calmly.
“That sentence used to work on me.”
Then she stood.
I followed her out.
We reached the hotel garden before she stopped.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Dragging you into this.
Lauren was awful.
Evan was worse.
My mother is probably ordering invitation samples as we speak.”
“Clare.”
She kept talking.
“We can end it after the ceremony.
I’ll tell them we decided to keep things private or postpone or join a monastery—”
“Clare.”
