How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Twenty-Five

I didn't answer him that night.

He didn't make me.

He drove me home at two in the morning with the heat on high, and walked me to my door, and stood on the landing while I found my keys.

"Ask me in the morning," I said.

"Which morning?"

"Saturday. Wheels up by nine. You know the schedule."

He nodded once and went down the stairs.

Friday, July 10, came and went.

At ten in the morning, the hour my father's closing was meant to happen, I was asleep on my couch with the TV on mute.

Nobody signed anything.

Nobody measured anything.

The Lantern Room sat on the second floor of the Bellmore with its forty lanterns and its three hundred chairs, waiting for a wedding nobody was having.

On Saturday I woke up at five.

I lay there and listened to the rain stop.

At seven my buzzer went.

I looked out the window.

There was a black town car at the curb with a driver holding a little sign.

FAIRBAIRN. O'HARE.

My father had booked it a week ago.

Nobody had canceled it.

Parked right behind it, crooked, was Wyeth's car.

He was leaning on the hood with two coffees.

I went down in jeans and a T-shirt, with nothing in my hands but my mother's green clutch.

The driver held the town car door open for me.

"Miss Fairbairn? International departures?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "You've had a wasted trip. Send the bill to my father."

I walked past him and got into Wyeth's car instead.

Wyeth got in and handed me a coffee and didn't start the engine.

"Well?" he said. "It's seven. That's the morning."

"I'm not getting on the plane."

His mouth curled into a smile.

"Where to, then?"

"Wacker Drive," I said. "I've got a wedding to cancel."

It took all day.

I called the florist and the band and the photographer from the back office, because nobody had told me I couldn't.

I sent three hundred chairs back to the rental company.

Wyeth's grandmother called at noon.

"Don't send the flowers back, dear. I've paid for them. Give them to the staff."

"All of them?"

"I don't care for hydrangeas. Let them take them home."

By evening, there were white hydrangeas in the night cook's kitchen and on the front desk and in a bucket by the doorman's post.

Nobody would tell me why the Lantern Room doors were locked.

At a quarter to midnight Dolly came up to the back office with a garment bag over her shoulder.

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