Epilogue 1
DAVID
Four Months Later . . .
My daughter is approaching her role as flower girl with the seriousness of a UN peacekeeping operation.
“The petals need to fall in a consistent pattern,” she tells me, adjusting her basket. “Not clumped. Not scattered randomly. A measured, elegant distribution that suggests both celebration and restraint.”
“You’re nine, Michaela.”
“Correct. And I’ve been researching floral dispersal techniques.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now. I wrote a brief.”
She’s in a pale gold dress that Layla chose and Michaela approved after what I’m told was a three-round negotiation involving fabric swatches, a mood board, and a section titled “Why Tulle Is a Structural Liability in Outdoor Settings.” Her hair is in loose curls that Nora spent forty minutes on this morning while Michaela sat on the bathroom counter delivering her opening remarks for the reception toast she has not been asked to give but fully intends to deliver.
She looks beautiful. Just like her mother, Nora.
The venue is a lakefront estate north of the city, the ceremony on a stone terrace overlooking the water, flanked by arrangements of white peonies and trailing greenery that probably took a team of florists to install.
The chairs are a pale linen. The aisle is lined with lanterns.
The afternoon light is doing that thing it does in late April—golden, warm, making everything look like a memory even while it’s happening.
It is, by any objective measure, the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever attended.
And I say this as a man who once attended a wedding in Monaco where the bride arrived by helicopter.
This is better. Better because the people getting married genuinely deserve each other, which is not always the case at events with this kind of budget.
My gaze sweeps the room, and I shake my head.
Half of Wall Street and a solid chunk of Manhattan media have turned up.
Ronan Kennedy stands near the bar with Becca tucked under his arm, the two of them looking as disgustingly in love as they did the day he put that ring on her finger.
Peter Greer and Nina are beside them, Nina laughing at something that has Peter shaking his head with that reluctant grin he only wears for her.
Across the terrace, Drew Miller has his arm draped over Eve’s shoulders, her pink hair impossible to miss, while Carson Myles and Presley sway near the dance floor like they’ve already forgotten anyone else exists.
Brody Harrington has claimed a corner table with Mia on his lap—because of course the grouchiest man on Wall Street turns into a marshmallow the second his wife is within arm’s reach.
And then there’s the Wright Media contingent.
Tanner Wright is holding court near the dessert table with Ruby.
Ash and Tahlia have flown in from Atlanta, Tahlia’s red hair bright against Ash’s broad shoulder.
Banks Johnson and Isla Wright arrived late—twins, they said by way of apology—but Banks made a beeline for Ronan the moment he walked in, the two of them falling into conversation the way lifelong friends do.
Thomas Canning is here too. I didn’t expect that—but Bennett’s guest list operates on its own logic, and Thomas’s firm has done enough business with Mercer Capital that the invitation was natural.
He’s at a table near the bar with three of his Canfield Group partners, all of them in suits that suggest the firm is doing well despite the domestic earthquake of the last few months.
The newly divorced Thomas catches my eye across the room and lifts his glass—a small gesture, steady, the acknowledgment of two men who went through something together and came out the other side with their dignity intact.
I return the nod. I don’t know where Kelsie is.
I don’t need to know. That chapter is closed, and we’re all better for it.
Thomas’s partners are an interesting group. I’ve met a couple in passing. Sharp, successful, the kind of men who run billion-dollar portfolios but haven’t yet figured out that money doesn’t solve the things that actually matter. They’ll learn. Everybody does eventually.
Nora is beside me, in a deep green dress that does things to her body I’m choosing not to think about in the presence of clergy.
Her hair is down. My ring is on her finger.
Michaela’s ring—the silver band with the mother and child—is on her other hand, because Nora wears it every day and won’t take it off. I love that about her.
She’s watching Michaela inspect the petal basket with the expression she gets when our daughter does something that is simultaneously ridiculous and wonderful and so specifically Michaela that no other child on earth could produce it.
“She’s definitely going to give a speech, you know,” Nora says as Michaela makes her way through the crowd when the wedding planner waves her over. “She showed me her index cards in the car.”
“Should I intervene?”
“Absolutely not. Layla will love it. Bennett will tolerate it. Dominic will cry.”
“Dominic cries at everything.”
“Dominic cries at things that matter. He’s got a surprisingly high EQ.”
I look at my fiancée. My fiancée. The word still recalibrates something in my chest every time I think it.
A quiet, settled certainty that she and I are permanent.
Nora Harrison is going to be my wife. She is Michaela’s mother.
The adoption paperwork is filed and moving through the system with bureaucratic slowness, but it will, eventually, confirm what has been true for months.
We are a family.
We’ve been a family since long before anyone stamped a document, but the document is coming, and the day it arrives I’m going to frame it and hang it in our kitchen next to the photo of the three of us that Dominic took at the engagement party where Nora is crying and I’m crying and Michaela is eating a breadstick because she needed carbohydrates.
The months since the trial ended have been the quietest of my life. Quiet in the best way. Settled.
I still wake early because habit is hard to kill and litigation rewired my nervous system years ago, but now when I wake, Nora is beside me in a tangle of blankets and auburn hair, one hand tucked under her cheek, the other reaching in her sleep for whichever warm body is closest. Some mornings that body is mine.
Some mornings Michaela has appeared at dawn with her seal plush and a philosophical question about whether cereal qualifies as soup.
Archie, traitor that he is, belongs to whoever has the softest blanket.
I used to think peace would feel dramatic. Like a bell going silent after years of ringing.
It doesn’t.
It feels like packing school lunches while Nora corrects spelling words at the kitchen island.
Like Michaela arguing that dress shoes are a patriarchal invention while I tie her sash for a father-daughter fundraiser she has already prepared talking points for.
Like signing engagement contracts and adoption forms in the same week and realizing I no longer flinch every time an envelope from a lawyer arrives, because sometimes the paperwork is for good things too.
It feels like this.
Sunlight. Flowers. Nora beside me. Michaela trying to operationalize petals as the wedding planner guides her into position.
The music changes and we all take our seats.
Michaela readies herself at the end of the aisle with her basket, and when the processional starts, the entire assembly turns toward her.
She walks with measured precision, distributing petals in the “consistent pattern” she promised, each handful tossed with an elegance that suggests she has, in fact, been practicing.
Nora’s hand finds mine.
“She’s perfect,” she whispers.
“She really is.”
“I’m going to cry.”
“You’re already crying.”
“I’m pre-crying. The real crying starts when Layla walks out.”
Layla walks out. The real crying starts.
She’s in white. The dress is understated in the way only something ruinously expensive can be—clean lines, soft movement, nothing fussy.
Layla has managed to look both regal and like herself, which is rarer than people think.
Bennett, standing at the front beside Caleb, takes one look at her and loses whatever remained of his composure.
Caleb notices immediately and hands him a handkerchief.
Nora makes a sound beside me that is half laugh, half sob.
I squeeze her hand.
The ceremony is beautiful. Bennett Mercer—who once treated emotion like a hostile takeover—looks at Layla like she is the first honest thing he’s ever owned outright. And Layla looks back like she knows exactly what kind of man he is and chose him anyway.
There’s something about weddings, when they’re done right, that strips people down to the bone.
The officiant speaks. Vows are exchanged. Bennett says Layla’s name like it matters more than language itself. Layla laughs once through tears and says something that makes half the front rows cry outright and the other half pretend they’re not.
Nora is sobbing openly.
By the time they kiss, she’s dabbing under both eyes with a tissue.
The applause rises around us in a warm wave.
Michaela, who has completed her duties and taken her seat in the front row between Nora and me, whispers, “Excellent execution. I’d give it an eight point five.”
“Out of what?”
“Ten. The vows were strong but the ring exchange fumble cost them half a point.”
“Bennett’s hands were shaking.”
“That’s not an excuse. Surgeons shouldn’t drop the scalpel.”
“He’s not a surgeon.”
“He isn’t? Then what on earth does he do?”
“Buys and sells companies,” I say, which is simple but not inaccurate.
She scrunches up her nose. “How incredibly boring!”
Nora claps a hand over her mouth to contain a laugh that would be inappropriate during the recessional. I squeeze her other hand. Michaela sits between us, ready for the reception—specifically the cake.