I have never once heard a man say that sentence to his wife out loud.
I’d like you to know I’d have come over anyway.”
“You had the release.”
“I had the release,” he agreed.
“But I’d have found a reason.”
I signed the document in the office in ninety seconds.
Then I went back into the ballroom, and I sat at Table Twelve, beside the kitchen doors, next to two photographers’ assistants named Ruby and Cass, and I ate the chicken, and I let the wedding happen.
People ask why.
Because it was Miles’s wedding.
Garrett’s cousin — twenty-eight years old, decent, who had asked me at Thanksgiving what my work actually involved and had listened to the whole answer.
It was his day.
Ruining it would have cost him something and cost the Winslows nothing, because people like the Winslows never pay for scenes; the people around them do.
