During dinner, Monty and Violet both make their toasts—his punctuated by laughter, hers by tears—and Hadley watches Charlotte and Dad as they listen, their eyes shining. Later, after the cake has been cut and Charlotte has managed to duck Dad’s attempts to get even for the white frosting she smeared on his nose, there’s more dancing. By the time coffee is served they’re all slumped at the table together, their cheeks flushed and their feet sore. Dad sits wedged between Hadley and Charlotte, who—between sips of champagne and tiny bites of cake—keeps flashing him looks.
“Do I have something on my face?” he asks eventually.
“No, I’m just hoping everything’s okay with you two,” she admits. “After your discussion out on the dance floor.”
“That looked like a discussion?” Dad says with a grin. “It was supposed to be a waltz. Did I get the steps wrong?”
Hadley rolls her eyes. “He stomped on my toes at least a dozen times,” she tells Charlotte. “But other than that, we’re fine.”
Dad’s mouth falls open in mock anger. “There’s no way it was more than twice.”
“Sorry, darling,” Charlotte says. “I’ll have to side with Hadley on this one. My poor bruised toes speak for themselves.”
“Married only a few hours, and already you’re disagreeing with me?”
Charlotte laughs. “I promise I’ll be disagreeing with you till death us do part, my dear.”
Across the table, Violet raises her glass and then taps it gently with her spoon, and amid the more frantic clinking that follows, Dad and Charlotte lean in for yet another kiss, separating only after realizing there’s a waiter hovering just behind them, waiting to take their plates.
Once her own place setting is cleared, Hadley pushes back her chair and leans forward to pick up her purse. “I think I might go get some fresh air,” she announces.
“Are you feeling all right?” Charlotte asks, and Monty winks at her from over the top of his champagne glass, as if to say he’d warned her not to drink too much.
“I’m fine,” Hadley says quickly. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Dad leans back in his chair with a knowing smile. “Say hello to your mom for me.”
“What?”
He nods at her purse. “Tell her I said hi.”
Hadley grins sheepishly, surprised to have been figured out so easily.
“Yup, I’ve still got it,” he says. “The parental sixth sense.”
“You’re not as smart as you think you are,” Hadley teases him, then turns to Charlotte. “You’ll be better at it. Trust me.”
Dad slips an arm around his new wife’s shoulders and smiles up at Hadley. “Yes,” he says, kissing the side of Charlotte’s head. “I’m sure she will.”
As she walks away, Hadley can already hear Dad beginning to regale his tablemates with stories of her childhood, all the many times he came to the rescue, all the instances when he was a step ahead. She turns around once, and when he sees her he pauses—his hands raised in midair, as if demonstrating the size of a fish or the length of a field, or some other token fable from the past—and gives her a wink.
Just outside the doors to the ballroom, Hadley pauses for a moment herself, standing with her back to the wall. It’s like emerging from a dream, seeing the rest of the hotel guests in their jeans and sneakers, the world muted by the lingering music in her ears, everything too bright and slightly unreal. She makes her way through the revolving doors and takes a deep breath once she steps outside, welcoming the cool air and the insistent breeze.
There are stone steps that span the length of the hotel, ridiculously grand, like the entrance to a museum, and Hadley moves off to the side and finds a place to sit down. The moment she does, she realizes her head is pounding and her feet are throbbing. Everything about her feels heavy, and once again she tries to remember the last time she slept. When she squints at her watch, attempting to calculate what time it is back home and how long she’s been awake, the numbers blur in her head and refuse to cooperate.
There’s another message from Mom on her phone, and Hadley’s heart leaps at the sight of it. It feels like they’ve been apart for much longer than a day, and though she has no idea what time it is at home, Hadley dials and closes her eyes as she listens to the hollow sound of the ringing.
“There you are,” Mom says when she picks up. “That was some game of phone tag.”
“Mom,” Hadley mumbles, resting her forehead in her hand. “Seriously.”
“I’ve been dying to talk to you,” Mom says. “How are you? What time is it there? How’s it all going?”
Hadley takes a deep breath, then wipes her nose. “Mom, I’m really sorry about what I said to you earlier. Before I left.”
“It’s okay,” she says after a half beat of silence. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
“I didn’t.”
“And listen, I’ve been thinking….”
“Yeah?”
“I shouldn’t have made you go. You’re old enough to make these kinds of decisions on your own now. It was wrong of me to insist.”
“No, I’m glad you did. It’s been surprisingly… okay.”
Mom lets out a low whistle. “Really? I would’ve bet money that you’d be calling me demanding to come home on an earlier flight.”
“Me, too,” Hadley says. “But it’s not so bad.”
“Tell me everything.”
“I will,” she says, stifling a yawn. “But it’s been a really long day.”
“I bet. So just tell me this for now: How’s the dress?”
“Mine or Charlotte’s?”
“Wow,” Mom says, laughing. “So she’s graduated from that British woman to just Charlotte, huh?”
Hadley smiles. “Guess so. She’s actually sort of nice. And the dress is pretty.”
“Have you and your dad been getting along?”
“It was touch-and-go earlier, but now we’re fine. Maybe even good.”
“Why, what happened earlier?”
“It’s another long story. I sort of ducked out for a while.”
“You left?”
“I had to.”
“I bet your father loved that. Where’d you go?”
Hadley closes her eyes and thinks of what Dad said about Charlotte earlier, about how she talks about the things that she hopes might come true.