The office on the top floor was a long room with windows on three sides. There was a desk of dark wood at the far end, and a leather chair behind it, and two armchairs in front of it, and a low bookshelf along one wall that held no books, only photographs.
The photographs were of his grandfather: his grandfather at the docks in 1952, his grandfather with the first ship that had carried the Carrington name in 1959, his grandfather at the wedding of Nathaniel's parents in 1979, his grandfather holding Nathaniel as an infant in 1982.
There were no photographs of anyone else in the room. He had not put any up since his grandfather had died, and he had not added any of his own life because his own life had not, until this morning, seemed important enough to record.
He walked to the desk. He sat down. He looked out the window at the river. For a long time, he did not move.
He thought about Vivian. He thought about the way she had looked when she had said the words, "I did not want you to know what kind of family you were marrying into." He thought about the way her chin had lifted before she said it—the small, involuntary gesture of a woman who had been raised by Elaine Ashford to lift her chin whenever she was about to say something that hurt.
He understood, sitting at the desk with the morning light coming across his hands, that he had spent 9 months loving a woman he did not actually know. The woman he had loved had been a careful arrangement of the woman in front of him, edited and presented for his benefit.
The real woman was probably not a bad person. She was probably, like her mother, a frightened person who had learned to manage her fear by managing the people around her. He understood that he could feel sorry for her without choosing to spend the rest of his life with her. He understood that those two things were allowed to coexist.
He thought about the boy. He thought about the boy for a long time.
He thought about the moment in the vestibule when Elijah had said, "The ring on her finger, sir, the one she has been wearing, it isn't real." He thought about the way the boy had carried the small bunch of white lilies the whole time, even when he had been sitting on the bench in the side room waiting for Nathaniel to come back for him. He thought about the boy walking down the side aisle to sit beside his mother. He thought about the boy's mother putting her arm around him in the pew.
He thought about the kind of woman who taught a child to look at things, who taught him that the world owed him no particular favors, but that he owed the world the truth.
At 11:00, the phone on the desk rang. It was the intercom from downstairs. Frank's voice was low and respectful.
"Mr. Carrington, Anthony has arrived with two guests—a woman and a boy. Shall I send them up?"
"Yes, please. And Frank, bring up a tray with whatever we have in the small kitchen: sandwiches, fruit, whatever there is, and a bottle of something for the boy. Apple juice if there is any, milk if not."
"Yes, sir."
Nathaniel stood up from the desk. He walked to the windows and looked out at the river for one more long moment. Then he walked to the door of the office and opened it and waited.
The elevator chimed at the end of the hall. The doors opened. Anthony stepped out first and held the door for the woman and the boy.
Elijah was still wearing the borrowed white dress shirt and the trousers that were a little too short. The lilies were gone now; he must have left them in the pew. His mother walked beside him. She had taken her hair out of the practical knot it had been in at the cathedral, and it fell to her shoulders in soft dark waves. She had a coat folded over her arm.
She looked, Nathaniel thought, very much like a woman who had been on her feet since 4:00 in the morning arranging flowers for someone else's wedding, and was now being asked to walk into a stranger's office on the day that wedding had not taken place.
He stepped out into the hallway to meet them.
"Lillian," he said quietly. He was not certain of her name, but he had used it the way Anthony had said it on the phone, and her small nod confirmed that he had it right. "Lillian, Elijah. Thank you for coming. Please, come in."
He led them into the long office. The boy looked at the windows first, the way a child looks at something larger than he had expected. His mother looked at the photographs on the bookshelf. She paused for a small second at the photograph of Nathaniel's grandfather at the docks in 1952, and then she walked on.
Nathaniel gestured to the two armchairs. "Please, sit, both of you. I have asked for a tray to be brought up. You have been on your feet all morning, and so has your son, and so have I. And I think the three of us could use something to eat before we say anything important."
Lillian sat down slowly. Elijah sat in the chair beside hers. He did not lean back; he sat the way he had sat on the bench in the side room of the cathedral, with his hands folded in his lap and his back straight, waiting.
Nathaniel sat across from them in the leather chair behind the desk. For a long moment, none of them spoke.
It was Lillian, in the end, who broke the silence.
"Mr. Carrington," she said quietly, "I do not know exactly why we are here, but I want to say something to you before we say anything else. What you did this morning—stopping the wedding, speaking the way you spoke, mentioning my son by name in front of 300 people—that was a kindness I did not expect from anyone, ever. I want to thank you for it."