Everything else is somebody else’s problem.”
She nodded and looked at the basket.
“Dad,” she said.
“Do you think Mom would think it was okay?
The wedding?”
And I want to be honest about what I did with that, because it is the last chance I had.
I said, “I think your mom would want us both to be happy.” And I kissed the top of her head and I went to go and deal with something about the sound system.
It was a good answer.
It was the answer any decent father gives.
It was also, I understand now, an answer to a question she had not asked, and she had chosen her words carefully, and what she had actually asked me — at twelve-thirty in the afternoon, on a stone wall, with two and a half hours left — was whether she was allowed to still belong to her mother after three o’clock.
At about one-fifteen, Pamela took her by the hand and said she wanted to show her something.
Four people saw that happen.
Nobody thought anything of it, including me, because I was thirty feet away and it looked like exactly what it was supposed to look like.
That is the last time anyone saw my daughter until 2:57.
Part Six: The Walk Down the Corridor
It is about ninety feet from that laundry room to the door onto the terrace.
I have thought about those ninety feet a great deal, because everything was still recoverable at the start of them and nothing was by the end.
I had her hand and I was walking slowly, because I needed her to be able to keep up and because I needed the time.
