Chapter 7: The Hatbox

Callie's text came at six the next morning.

Engagement photos. Our garden. 4pm. Come in the side gate. Please come.

At four I lifted the side gate the way I always had, and it opened.

My mother's garden looked like a magazine.

White hydrangeas. A rented arch of roses by the fountain. Two lights on stands and a reflector.

A photographer was crouched in the grass.

A planner with a headset was steaming the hem of Annie's dress.

The dress was white eyelet, and Annie was standing very straight under the arch with her cane hidden behind her back.

Bryce had his arm around her in a cream linen suit.

"Chin up, Annie," my mother called from a garden chair. "Bryce, darling, closer. Like you mean it."

"I always mean it," Bryce said, and everyone laughed.

Everyone except Annie.

She saw me first.

She didn't look away.

My mother saw her not looking away, and turned in her chair.

"Absolutely not," she said. "Roark, this is a private event."

"I was invited."

"By whom?"

"By me," Callie said.

She came down the back steps holding a round box against her chest.

An old pink hatbox with a faded ribbon. I knew that box. It used to sit on the top shelf of my mother's closet with her wedding veil in it.

"Callie, go inside," my mother said.

Callie didn't go inside.

She walked straight across the lawn, through the lights, past the photographer, and set the hatbox on the little table where the champagne was.

She took the lid off.

It was full of envelopes.

White envelopes, prison-issue, the stamped kind they sell in the commissary. My handwriting on every one.

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