Chapter 23: Get Out of My House

"It was a letter," said Daphne.

Her voice came out small and clear in the silent ballroom.

"It was a letter about leaving. She gave it to me at two in the morning, in the kitchen."

She looked at Nolan.

"She said, take it to him. I stood at the sink with it for an hour."

"And then?" said Nolan.

"And then I put it in the drawer."

A woman near the door gasped and was hushed.

Ambrose had not moved from his chair. His hands were on his stick.

"Daphne," he said. "Say that you did not."

"I did, Grandpa."

"Why?"

She turned to him, and the tears on her face were real.

"Because I was the good one," she said. "My whole life."

Her voice shook.

"The one who smiled, the one who stayed. The one you put in front of your friends. Nobody ever looked at me the way he looked at her."

She pointed at Willa without looking at her.

"She'd come into a room, and he'd look up. He never once did that for me."

"I sat across from them at every Sunday dinner. I watched his ears go red."

"Daphne," Nolan said, low.

"I was twenty-five. I thought, she's leaving anyway. What does it hurt?"

Her voice rose.

"And then she was gone and he was so sad. I was the only person in that house who made him eat."

"You told me she hadn't written."

"She hadn't written to you. She'd written at you. There's a difference."

"There isn't," said Nolan.

She flinched.

"You let me name my daughter for a woman you'd cut out of my life. You stood in the delivery room and watched me do it."

"I know."

"You've been feeding her soup for three weeks."

"I wanted her where I could see her," said Daphne, and her face crumpled.

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