The day she stopped waiting

Chapter 7

The engagement celebration was Patricia's idea.

Lydia hadn't asked for it. She hadn't even known it was happening until two weeks before, when her mother called to say she'd booked the private room at Castello's the nice Italian place, the one with the arched ceilings and the candles in glass holders on every table and invited forty people, and by the way did Lydia want to be involved in the menu selection or did she trust Patricia's judgment?

Lydia said she trusted her judgment.

She spent two hours picking out a dress. Black, fitted, with a low back. She stood in front of the mirror and said out loud: "You belong here. This is your night."

She almost believed it.

The restaurant was beautiful. The food was good. The wine was flowing and everyone was dressed up and smiling, and for the first hour Lydia actually thought it might be okay. She moved through the room on Daniel's arm and accepted hugs and congratulations and tried very hard to simply be present in the moment.

Then her Aunt Helen pulled her aside near the dessert table. Helen had had a little too much wine. Her voice was loosened. She leaned in conspiratorially, her perfume close and heavy.

"You know, your mother was telling me that you've been a little insecure lately," Helen said, in the warm tone of someone who genuinely thinks they are being helpful. "About Daniel and Selene. And I just want to say, honey, I've known that boy since he first came to Sunday dinner, and it's nothing. He's just protective of her. They're friends."

Lydia went very still. "My mother told you that."

"She's just worried. We all are." Helen patted her hand. "Selene has had a hard few years. She needs the support. And you're so strong, Lydia you've always been the strong one. We never worry about you the way we worry about her."

We never worry about you.

Lydia heard those words land and felt something shift inside her. Not break, not yet. Shift. The way the earth shifts before the actual quake.

"I'm going to get some air," she said.

She walked to the terrace.

Selene was there.

Selene, of course, was there leaning against the railing in a red dress, laughing at something on her phone, looking effortlessly beautiful in the way she always did without trying. She looked up when Lydia stepped out.

"Hey!" She smiled. "It's beautiful out here, isn't it?"

"Did you know my mother told Helen I was being insecure?"

The smile faltered slightly. "What?"

"About you. And Daniel." Lydia's voice was steady. She was surprised by how steady it was. "Did you know she's been talking to people about me?"

Selene put her phone down. Her expression shifted into something careful. That particular look Lydia knew the soft, worried, oh Lydia face that meant she was about to be managed.

"She's not I don't think she meant it like "

"I saw you at the lake."

Silence.

The air between them went tight.

"When?" Selene said. Her voice was quiet now.

"March. The Wednesday in March. I was coming to meet Daniel. I saw you on the dock." Lydia held her gaze. "I've been waiting for you to say something. Or for him to say something. Or for anyone to say anything. But nobody has, so I'm saying it."

Selene opened her mouth. Closed it.

"It's not Lydia, it's not what you think."

"Tell me what it is."

Another silence. Longer this time. Lydia watched her sister's face and saw the thing she had been trying not to see for months not guilt exactly, but knowledge. The knowledge of someone who knows they've been holding a secret that has a shape.

"We were just talking," Selene said finally. "We talk sometimes. It's " She stopped.

"You talk to my fiancé at the lake at eleven o'clock at night and you didn't mention it." Lydia's voice didn't shake. She was almost proud of it. "And he didn't mention it. And when I called you that night and asked what you were doing, you said you were at home. You had a long day."

Selene looked at the ground.

"I was going to —"

"Don't." Lydia held up a hand. "Don't tell me you were going to say something. I need you to not say that to me right now."

She walked back inside.

Daniel was at the bar. He saw her face when she came in from the terrace and his own face changed. Just slightly. In the way of someone who has been half-expecting a conversation they don't know how to have.

"Hey," he said. "You okay?"

"No." She said it simply. Without drama. "I'm not okay."

He set down his glass. "Ly —"

"I talked to Selene."

The air around them went careful in the same way it had on the terrace. She could feel people nearby starting to notice, the subtle shift in the room's attention that happens when something real starts happening at a party.

"We should talk somewhere private," Daniel said.

"We've been private for months," Lydia said. "We've been so private that you and my sister have apparently been having entire conversations I don't know about, and my family has apparently been talking about me being insecure, and nobody not one person in this room that my mother invited to celebrate us thought to just tell me the truth."

Her voice was still calm. She wanted them to hear that. She wanted them to know that she was not having a breakdown. She was not being dramatic. She was standing in the middle of her own engagement party and saying out loud the thing that everyone else had been carefully, quietly, lovingly refusing to say.

She looked at Daniel. She looked for something in his face remorse, love, the specific expression of a man who has made a mistake and is ready to fight to fix it. She looked for any evidence that she was still the person he had chosen.

What she found was discomfort.

"I love you," he said. And the word had a shape she recognized the shape of something said out of habit, out of kindness, out of not knowing what else to say.

She had heard that word from this family her whole life. She had heard it said out of obligation, out of routine, out of not wanting to have a harder conversation. She knew what love said out of love felt like, and she knew what love said out of comfort felt like, and she had been confused between the two for so long.

She was done being confused.

She took the ring off her finger.

It didn't feel dramatic. It felt like putting down something she'd been carrying too long. She set it on the bar beside his glass. Not threw it, not slammed it. Just set it down, gently, with both hands.

"I'm going home," she said.

She got her coat. She said goodbye to no one. She walked out of Castello's into the cold night air and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, breathing.

She felt light.

Not happy. Not okay. But light. Like she had been holding her breath for years and had only just now, finally, exhaled.