Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nathalie
"Left side first," the woman says, reaching for the buttons at the back of the dress. "Hold still."
Her name is Sofia and she has been in the house for two weeks disguised as a maid. She is one of Renzo's best and in the bustle of wedding preparations nobody had looked at her twice. Nobody looks at maids. I had counted on that.
"There," Sofia says, stepping back. "Turn around."
I turn and I look at myself in the mirror and I look at the dress. It was a strapless, v-neck gown. About three top designers had worked on it. The door opens and father comes in with Gerald a step behind him.
"Every major outlet is covering it," he announces, coming toward me with his hands spread wide to take me in. "It's trending, Nathalie. All of it." He shakes his head like a man who cannot quite believe his own good fortune. "You have made me proud."
"I'm glad," I tell him.
Gerald steps forward and holds out a folded paper and my father takes it and hands it to me, "Your speech. Read it word for word. Don't improvise."
I unfold it.
It is long. Paragraph after paragraph about what a devoted father he had been, what a wonderful childhood he had given me, how much I owed him, how proud I was to be his daughter. The words are clearly written by someone who does this professionally.
My mother's name does not appear once.
"Of course," I tell him, folding it back. "I won't disappoint you."
He looks at me and then at the dress and then around the room, "After the wedding we have appearances. A lot of them. Make sure you watch what you eat between now and then, I don't want you looking bloated in photographs."
"I'll be careful," I reply.
He looks at me for a moment longer and then he reaches out, takes both my hands in his and he looks at my face and he says, in a voice I have not heard from him in so long I had stopped believing it existed, "I love you."
He leans forward and he kisses my head.
And then he leaves, Gerald closing the door softly behind him.
I stand in the middle of the room and I feel my heart come apart in a way that is different from all the other times it has come apart, because this time I understand exactly what it is.
It is the sound of a door closing on something I have been standing outside of my entire life, permanently, with full understanding of what is on the other side and the knowledge that it was never going to open.
He said he loved me because today was important to him.
He said it because the cameras were coming and the speech was written and the story needed a loving father and he had decided to give me the line early so I would carry it correctly onto the stage.
I pick up a paper towel from the dressing table and I press it carefully to the place on my head where he kissed me to wipe it. Then I fold it and I set it down and I turn to Sofia and I say, "He ruined my makeup. Can you fix it?"
She comes forward with the brush without a word and I sit and I look at myself in the mirror while she works.
I wonder if Luca will come. Maybe he would ignore Renzo. If he didn't, that is fine. That is a sign and I will read it correctly. I will let him be and I will do this alone the way I have done most things alone, that will be alright.
I look out the window.
The garden below is full. There are white chairs filling up, cameras positioned at every angle, reporters with their phones already raised.
I can see the arch with the white roses and the greenery along the chairs exactly as I had specified and I think, I did that, I planned that, and today none of it is for the reason anyone in that garden thinks it is.
"Done," Sofia says, stepping back.
I stand and I look at myself one more time. I turn to Sofia.
"Watch for my signal," I tell her quietly, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "When I give it, you come."
She nods. I pick up my bouquet. It's time.
* * *
My father's hand is under mine and his back is straight and his smile is big as the cameras are flashing from every angle. I look ahead at the arch with the white roses and I think, nearly there.
James is in his wheelchair waiting.
He has a smile that I can see the effort of it in the set of his jaw.
He had learned well in the last month that he had no real choices left in this situation and he had made the calculation that survival required compliance, and so he complied.
His father stands to the right of the wheelchair with his arms folded and his eyes on his son. The cameras flash.
The guests murmur.
My father delivers me to the altar with a squeeze of my hand that is m for the audience and steps back and the priest begins.
The priest turns to James.
"Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
James looks at his father. His father looks back at him with eyes that do not move.
James turns to the priest and produces the smile again and says, "I do."
A cheer goes up. Cameras flash in a wave. I hear the reporters at the back of the garden calling to each other.
The priest turns to me.
"Do you take this man—"
"I—" I begin.
I stop, because at the back of the garden, moving through the seated guests are two figures in black tuxedos.
Luca and Renzo beside him.
Luca is looking directly at me. James turns pale.
He has seen them too. I look at Luca for one more second then I reach out and I take the microphone from the priest's hand.
My father's face changes immediately. The pride goes out of it and he turns to Gerald with a look that I catch from the corner of my eye and I think, too late, Dad.
"Thank you all for being here," I say into the microphone, and my voice comes out steady and clear and carries to every corner of the garden. "As you know, today is my wedding. And I wouldn't be here today if not for my dearest father."
James stares at me. His mouth opens slightly and he closes it and looks around at the cameras, realizing he is standing in the middle of something he doesn't understand.
The cameras are flashing furiously, turning toward my father, and I smile at him and I say, "Come up here, Dad. Come on."
My father's smile is a masterpiece. He produces it from nowhere and he walks up to me and he takes my hand. His fingers are stiff as he leans slightly toward me and through his teeth, with the smile still perfectly in place, he whispers, "What are you doing?"
I turn to the microphone.
"My father is the best man I know," I say. "As a father. As a political figure." I pause. "As a husband."
The last word lands in the garden and I watch my father's color change.
I clap once and Sofia and the other maids appear from the edges of the garden moving through the rows of guests and they start to distribute photocopies of files. I printed more than enough copies.
I watch the papers pass from hand to hand, the documents that Renzo had retrieved from Michael's hard drive and my father's servers. He had organized them into the clearest possible sequence and sent it over. The printing took a week.
My father looks at me. "What is this?" he asks, the smile still present but cracking at the corners.
"You'll find out in a moment, Dad," I tell him softly.
I turn back to the microphone.
"In those papers," I say, "you will find proof of payment, invoices, and transcripts of recordings of my father arranging and financing the staged accident that took his wife's life."
The garden erupts. Cameras are going off everywhere at once, guests turning to each other, reporters on their feet already moving toward my father who has gone green.
"You will also find documentation of his bribery, his corrupt political practices, and his financial arrangements with several criminal organizations over the past fifteen years," I continue pleasantly. "My treat."
Senator Hartley walks out immediately and his assistant wheels James toward the side exit.
"Robert, this is a misunderstanding, if you'll just let me!" my father calls. Senator Hartley keeps walking.
Gerald materializes at my father's elbow and reporters are converging from three directions and my father is saying, loudly, "This is fabricated. Every word of this is false, this is a politically motivated attack on my family and I will be pursuing legal—"
I look at him and I blow him a kiss.
I pull the veil from my hair and I step down from the raised platform and I walk through the garden toward the back and the reporters come to me, three of them immediately, all talking at once.
"Miss Keller, what prompted you to expose these details?"
"Is this a cheap campaign gimmick?"
"Can you confirm that these documents are real?"
"Miss Keller, do you have a statement about your father's—"
A gunshot splits the garden in half and everyone freezes.
In the silence that follows I hear nothing except the birds that have scattered from the garden wall and the distant sound of the city and then I hear footsteps, unhurried, and the crowd parts.
Luca walks through it. His hair pushed back and his jaw tense as his green eyes find me through the frozen garden.
He walks up to me and he stops, for a moment the garden, the reporters, the cameras, the chaos of my father's unravelling, all of it recedes and it is just him and me standing in the ruins of my wedding and looking at each other.
"You came," I say.
"You invited me," he replies. He looks at my face and he adds, "I'm not leaving without you."
"Alright then," I say.
He bends and he scoops me up and I feel his arms around me and the white dress spills over them and he carries me through the garden. "Do you want me to handle your father?"
I look back at my father, at Gerald pressed close to him managing the converging reporters, at the papers being held up and photographed, at the expression on my father's face as the story he has been building for twenty years begins to come apart in front of cameras he invited.
"He's pretty much done," I tell him.
Behind us I hear Renzo's voice addressing the reporters who have turned toward us.
"I'd strongly suggest keeping your focus on Mr. Keller," Renzo says pleasantly. "What just happened here is above your pay grade. Mr. Keller, on the other hand, has a great deal he'd love to share with you."
The reporters turn back to my father as Luca.