“Are you free Saturday evening?”
Jade blinked.
“Why?”
Mom studied each photograph
“Come to dinner.”
Jade stammered out a yes.
***
On Saturday, Jade arrived at seven with a bottle of wine.
Dad was grilling outside, unaware of the photographs.
Over dinner, Jade watched him while he talked about a squirrel attacking the bird feeder.
“Come to dinner.”
Finally, Jade put down her fork.
“I showed your wife the photos.”
Dad frowned, a forkful halfway to his mouth. “What photos?”
“The ones with that young woman,” Mom said, and she looked straight at him.
He went still.
“What photos?”
“She’s coming here tonight,” Mom added.
“What?” Dad said.
“Helen, has she been following—”
That was as far as he got, because the entrance keypad chimed.
One soft beep for each digit.
“She’s coming here tonight,”
***
And that’s when I arrived.
I punched in the last digit and pushed the door open.
Ethan followed me inside.
I’d had a long drive, and all I wanted was my mother’s cooking and a hug.
Instead, three people were sitting motionless at the table.
Ethan followed me inside.
Dad looked bewildered.
Mom looked calm.
And in the third chair sat Jade.
Ethan’s mother.
“Jade?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Mom looked calm.
“Mom?” Ethan stopped behind me.
The color drained from her face.
Her eyes moved from me to him.
“Sophie,” Mom said evenly, “this is our neighbor, Jade. Jade, this is my daughter.”
Dad turned toward Jade.
“Mom?”
“Are these pictures of Sophie?”
“What pictures?” I asked.
“These photos of your father’s ‘affair.'”
Mom slid her phone across the tablecloth.
The first photo was me in Dad’s arms in the airport parking garage.
Then the café, where he’d bought me a latte and complained about prices.
“What pictures?”
Finally, the front door after my late flight.
Dad was carrying my bag; I was punching in the code I’d used for years.
I laughed.
“You thought my dad was having an affair with me?”
“I thought,” Jade said weakly, “that you… You’re his daughter?”
I looked at the parking-garage photograph again. “Wait, were you following us?”
I laughed.
“I was concerned about what I saw.”
“At the airport, at the café, and outside this house?”
I stopped laughing.
Those had been ordinary moments when I’d felt safe with my father. Someone had been watching for something to use against me, or my father.
Why? Was Jade just nosy, or was she up to something?
I stopped laughing.
“Mom.” I turned. “Did you know these were me?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “The moment I saw them.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I thought introducing you would clear up the mistake,” she said. “When I asked you to bring Ethan, I didn’t know I was inviting her son.”
“The moment I saw them.”
“Her son?”
Dad looked at Ethan, then Jade.
“Ethan’s my fiancé,” I said.
Mom’s calm cracked. She put down the serving spoon.
She looked at me, then at the two places she’d set for us.
“Her son?”
“I should have warned you about the photographs. I thought we’d all be laughing by now.”
I could see she meant it.
She’d expected to correct a mistake, not discover that the woman making it might become part of our family.
Ethan and I had been engaged for eight months.
She meant it.
We lived in the city, two hours from here.
This was supposed to be his first dinner with my parents.
Jade had moved here after I’d left home. She used a different surname from Ethan, and I’d only met her at restaurants in the city.
“I was trying to protect Helen,” Jade said quickly.
We lived in the city
“I didn’t know Paul was your father. I was shocked when I saw you with him… I mean, he’s my neighbor.”
I reached for Ethan’s hand, expecting him to laugh with me.
He kept looking at Jade.
“Did you tell Ethan you thought I was having an affair?” I asked her.
“I didn’t know.”
Jade folded her napkin.
“I warned him.”
Ethan let go of my hand.
“Mom, please.”
I thought of the last few weeks: his questions about where I’d been, who I’d had coffee with, why I hadn’t answered every call.
“I warned him.”
I’d put it down to stress.
We’d been choosing wedding music and arguing cheerfully about whether his uncle could be trusted with a microphone.
I’d thought we were tired, happy people planning a life together.
Now, I was discovering that he’d thought I was cheating.
I’d put it down to stress.
When I’d had a dreadful week at work, Ethan had come over with groceries and listened while I talked through it.
He hadn’t rushed me or tried to solve everything.
“Jade,” Mom said, “why didn’t you ask Sophie how she knew Paul?”
“Because my son deserved protection.”
He’d thought I was cheating.
“From me?” I asked.
“Someone has to look after him. He needs someone suitable.”
“Is that why you came to me?” Mom asked. “To get me to confront her?”
“He wouldn’t listen when I said I was worried,” Jade replied. “I thought if his wife knew—”
She stopped. Dad set down his fork.
“To get me to confront her?”
Jade had wanted an angry wife to confirm her accusation.
Instead, she’d brought it to my mother.
Dad stood and offered Ethan his hand.
“Paul. The father. Nice to finally meet you.”
“Sir, I’m so sorry.”
Jade had wanted an angry wife
Dad pulled out the chair beside mine for Ethan.
“You must be starving,” he said.
Ethan didn’t move toward it.
I watched Dad’s smile falter.
This was the welcome I’d wanted for him, and he was looking past it at his mother.
Ethan didn’t move
“Why are you apologizing to Dad?” I asked. “What did your mother tell you?”
“That she’d seen you with her married neighbor. I didn’t know she’d taken photos.”
“How long have you thought I might be cheating?”
He glanced at Jade.
“A couple of weeks.”
“What did your mother tell you?”
Two weeks.
I’d shown him wedding songs, asked whether his grandmother needed a ground-floor room, and kissed him goodbye while he wondered whether I was lying.
“You let me carry on planning our wedding without telling me there was a problem?”
“I didn’t want to accuse you without being sure.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Two weeks.
“I was trying to work out what was going on.”
“I told you I was visiting my parents.”
“I know. Mom shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
“You asked me to find out who he was!” Jade burst out.
“I asked whether you knew anything. I didn’t tell you to follow her.”
“You asked me to find out who he was!”
“You told me to find out before you spoke to her. You called twice to ask if I’d seen them again.”
I looked at Ethan.
“Is that true?”
“I wanted to know whether there was anything to worry about.”
“And if she’d kept finding something suspicious?” I asked. “How long would you have waited?”
I looked at Ethan.
Jade leaned forward.
“If you’d explained yourself—”
“I did. I said I was with my parents.”
I turned back to Ethan before she could answer again. He was the person I’d agreed to marry.
I needed to hear what he’d chosen, not another explanation of what Jade thought was best for him.
“If you’d explained yourself—”
“You asked your mother to check my story instead of asking me?”
He looked down.
“You recognized the house when we arrived,” I said. “You could have told me then.”
“I was embarrassed. I didn’t want our first dinner with your parents to turn into this.”
I stared at him. He’d been willing to sit beside me all evening without telling me what he’d done.
He looked down.
“Do you believe me now?” I asked.
“Of course. He’s your dad.”
I waited. He didn’t add anything.
Tonight I could point to my parents and settle it. Next time I had coffee with a colleague or missed a call, what would I have to produce?
“Of course. He’s your dad.”
I wanted him to understand that knowing who Dad was hadn’t fixed what he’d done.
“Can we talk? Alone?” he asked.
I nodded.
We stepped into Dad’s study and closed the door. I wanted to hear what Ethan would say without Jade answering for him.
“Can we talk? Alone?”
“Do you understand,” I asked, “why the surveillance and the secret accusation have changed how I see us?”
“I do,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you.”
He sat on the edge of Dad’s desk and held out his hand. I wanted to take it.
We could still go back, eat dinner, and have the evening we’d expected.
“I do,”
“I was scared I’d lose you,” he said.
I let myself believe that might be an explanation he could take responsibility for. My shoulders loosened a little.
“But, Soph, to be fair, Mom wouldn’t have worried if you’d been a little more available. A little more open about where you were.”
I thought I’d misheard him.
“I was scared.”
“I missed a call while I was having coffee with Dad. You knew I was visiting them.”
“I know. Just send a message next time. It takes two seconds.”
“So what would have been enough? Another message? A picture?”
“Soph, don’t make it sound like that.”
I was asking what he would need to trust me. He was asking me to make sure he never had to feel uncertain.
“It takes two seconds.”
“And can you just tell her you understand she meant well? It would mean a lot to her. She’s been so upset.”
I looked toward the dining room.
Even here, with the door closed, I was being asked to make things easier for his mother.
“I’m ending the engagement,” I said.
“She’s been so upset.”
He laughed once, thinly.
“Sophie, come on.”
“You asked your mother to watch me. You hid an accusation from me. And now you want me to take responsibility for how all of that made her feel.”
“It won’t happen again. I promise.”
“Sophie, come on.”
“We’ve already booked the room,” he added. “People have made plans. Let’s not decide everything tonight.”
My throat tightened.
I wanted the wedding, the apartment, the groceries on a bad night.
But I couldn’t make him trust me by getting married.
I wanted the wedding
“Okay.” My voice shook, but I kept going. “What will be different the next time she suspects something?”
He looked at the door, then back at me.
He didn’t answer.
I twisted the ring off. It stuck at the knuckle, then gave.
He didn’t answer.
I set it in his palm and closed his fingers over it.
For a second, he looked so lost that I almost reached for him.
That was what I usually did when he was hurt.
I pressed my empty hand against my leg instead. He could be upset. I could love him and still refuse the marriage he was asking me to accept.
He looked so lost
We went back out.
Mom glanced at my bare hand, then at my face.
Dad stood, but waited for me to speak.
“We’re not getting married,” I said.
Saying it in front of my parents made my eyes sting. I couldn’t turn it into a private argument we’d quietly forget by morning.
“We’re not getting married,”
Jade stood up, already starting.
“Sophie, I really think we should all calm—”
“No,” I said.
“Before you leave, you’ll say something. In front of Ethan. ‘The woman in those photographs was with her father. There was no affair.'”
Her jaw worked.
Jade stood
“I only meant—”
“Say it.”
“The woman in the photos was with her father,” Jade said, stiffly. “There was no affair.”
“And if you’ve told anyone else, you’ll tell them the same.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” she muttered. “Just Ethan. And Helen.”
“There was no affair.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
“My overnight bag is in your car,” I told Ethan. “Please bring it in.”
He paused, as though I’d asked something more final than returning a ring.
Then he went outside for it.
I stayed beside the table.
“Please bring it in.”
I’d arrived expecting us to drive home together.
Now I was choosing to remain in the house he’d come to meet my parents in.
He came back with my bag and set it by the door.
Then he turned to Jade.
“You told me you were certain.”
“You chose to believe her,” I said. “That was your decision.”
He came back
He looked at the ring in his hand.
Then he and Jade left together.
Then my knees gave out, and I sat down hard on the arm of the sofa.
I was relieved to be home with people who believed me. I also wanted Ethan to come back and somehow make none of this have happened.
He and Jade left together.
Mom came and sat beside me.
She just put her hand over mine, warm and dry and steady, and let me cry onto her shoulder until the blouse went damp.
After a while, I wiped my face on my sleeve.
“Is there still dinner?”
Dad was already in the kitchen.
I wiped my face
He came back carrying a plate covered in foil, the one Mom had kept warm for me, and set it at my usual seat.
It was the one with the chipped placemat I’d claimed at age seven.
He pulled back the foil.
Steam rose, smelling like chicken and rosemary and home.
He came back carrying a plate
I sat down between my parents and picked up my fork.
