Margaret continued:
“Your marriage may involve things you missed.”
“Yes.”
“That is different from causing them.”
He nodded.
“Do you want coffee?”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“I asked a simple question.”
“Yes.”
She made coffee.
Robert had taught Daniel to drink it black at sixteen.
Margaret still added cream.
Small continuities felt comforting.
Daniel looked toward her cheek.
“Still red.”
“Your wife has excellent hand-eye coordination.”
He almost laughed.
Then immediately looked guilty.
Margaret smiled.
“You’re allowed.”
He shook his head.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“She loves me.”
Margaret waited.
He looked at her.
“I think.”
“I think she does too.”
Daniel seemed surprised.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“After tonight?”
Margaret nodded.
“Love and good judgment are not the same thing.”
He stared into his cup.
“Do you think she married me for money?”
“No.”
The answer came faster than Daniel expected.
Margaret continued:
“I think money made you feel safer to her than she was willing to admit.”
He considered.
“That sounds almost worse.”
“Why?”
“Because then I don’t know where I end and what I represent begins.”
Margaret understood.
“Everyone represents something.”
“What did Dad represent to you?”
She smiled faintly.
“Escape.”
Daniel looked up.
“What?”
“I was twenty-three.”
Margaret had grown up in a small Pennsylvania town with a father who believed daughters should find respectable husbands and stop thinking about careers after marriage.
Robert met her during a supplier visit.
He admired ambition instead of treating it like an unpleasant habit.
Margaret loved him.
She also loved the life he represented.
Freedom.
Partnership.
A future larger than the one planned for her.
“Did that mean I didn’t love your father?”
“No.”
“Then don’t simplify Lauren because simplicity hurts less.”
Daniel nodded.
“What do I do?”
Margaret smiled sadly.
“You thought I’d tell you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to.”
He frowned.
“Thanks.”
“It’s your marriage.”
“I know.”
“Your decision.”
“I know.”
“You need to decide whether trust can be rebuilt.”
Daniel looked toward his bare left hand.
“And if it can’t?”
“Then it can’t.”
He swallowed.
“Thirty people are probably posting wedding pictures right now.”
“Two hundred.”
“Helpful.”
Margaret smiled.
“Go to bed.”
He did.
Not in the guest room.
In his childhood bedroom.
The room still contained a baseball trophy from age fourteen and a poster Margaret had asked him to remove for seventeen years.
She was suddenly grateful she never succeeded.
Monday brought attorneys.
The packet was examined.
Nathan Weiss’s digital signature had indeed been copied without permission.
Charles’s attorney blamed a junior document contractor.
The contractor produced emails.
Charles had specifically requested that the Hale counsel signature page be “carried forward from prior acknowledgment materials.”
Charles claimed he believed he had permission.
Nobody believed that explanation.
More damaging was the hotel amendment.
Lauren had submitted Daniel’s electronic signature.
She admitted it.
She had access to his event-planning account.