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Closed the door.
She looked at him.
At his face.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
“And I need you to hear all of it.”
“Before you say anything.”
She sat down.
He told her.
Everything.
The boy.
The letter.
What the letter said.
He watched her face change.
The way faces change when something impossible arrives.
In stages.
Confusion first.
Then disbelief.
Then the particular stillness of someone doing mathematics they don’t want to complete.
When he finished she was quiet for a long time.
“Show me the letter,” she said.
He gave it to her.
She read it.
Read it again.
Set it on her lap.
“She could be lying,” she said.
“She could be mistaken,” he said.
“Or she could be telling the truth.”
His bride looked at the door.
At the ballroom beyond it.
At two hundred people waiting.
At a wedding that was either the best day of their lives.