Not instead.
She said ‘sometimes.’”
I turned around and looked at her.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I asked her why and she said no reason and changed the subject, and I made a decision, and I have thought about that decision every day since three o’clock this afternoon.” My sister’s voice was completely level and her eyes were not.
“I decided that if I brought it to you and I was wrong, I’d be the sister who tried to blow up her brother’s engagement.
And you were happier than I’d seen you since Rebecca.
So I watched instead.
I’m sorry.”
I have never once blamed her for that and I have told her so more times than she wants to hear it.
But it is the second half of how this happens.
Not one person deceived by one person.
A household in which three or four people each had a piece, and each of them had a reasonable-sounding reason not to say it out loud, and the only one who tried was nine.
The following ten days were their own thing, and I want to record them accurately, because when people imagine the aftermath of a public cancellation they imagine drama and it was not drama.
It was administration and telephone calls.
I got the deposits back on the chairs and the quartet and lost everything on the catering, the flowers, the photographer and the venue, which is normal and which was correct.
Nineteen thousand three hundred dollars, of which about four came back over six weeks.
Pamela’s family had paid for the cake and the rehearsal dinner and I sent Delia a check for both and she sent it back, twice, and I stopped after the second time because it had stopped being about money.
The guests split roughly three ways.
Most of them — I would say fifty of the sixty-one — did the correct thing, which was nothing at all.
They sent one short message and then left me alone.
Two of the wives dropped food off at my house without knocking, which is the finest social technology human beings have ever developed and which nobody should ever tamper with.
Four people took the view that I had overreacted and that this could have been handled at home.
Three of those were Pamela’s relatives, which is entirely understandable.
