Chapter 2: The Placeholder
I said “I do.” I don’t remember deciding to.
The judge pronounced us married. Two hundred and forty people clapped uncertainly, because nobody knew what they’d just watched. My father’s face had turned the color of the cabernet on the label. My mother was smiling so hard I thought her jaw would crack.
At eleven the next morning, I sat on the stone terrace of my parents’ house in my own olive-green sweater and jeans. Julian had gone to San Francisco on the six a.m. helicopter, saying he’d send a car for me at noon. He hadn’t explained anything. He hadn’t touched me except to hold my hand down the aisle. He’d slept in the guest suite of the honeymoon cottage, and I’d lain awake in a bed scattered with rose petals, staring at the ceiling.
My father hadn’t touched his eggs.
“The wire cleared at nine,” he said. “Forty million. So whatever game he’s playing, it’s done.” He slid a folder across the table toward me. “When your sister comes back, and she will come back, you’ll sign these.”
Annulment papers. Already filled in. Already tabbed with little yellow arrows where I was supposed to sign.
“Dad. He filed the license in my name. Three weeks ago. He knew.”
“Then he’s a sentimental fool, and that’s his problem.” My father finally picked up his fork. “Let’s be clear about what you are in all this, Tessa. You’re just the placeholder. Smile and sign.”
My mother, across the table, buttered her toast and didn’t look up.
“Has anyone even called the police?” I asked. “About Celeste?”
“Celeste is a grown woman having a tantrum,” my father said. “She took her car. She left a note. She’ll turn up in Cabo with a tan and an apology.”
“Her phone’s been off for twenty-nine hours. Celeste doesn’t turn her phone off to sleep.”
“Tessa.” My mother set down her knife. “Don’t make this about you. You’ve never been good at it.”
I went upstairs to Celeste’s room while they finished eating. Her closet was still full. Her riding boots stood by the door. Her toothbrush was in the cup by the sink, and her favorite cashmere wrap, the one she took on every trip, even to the grocery store, hung on the back of her chair. People who run to Cabo pack a bag. I stood in the doorway for a long time, trying to make that make sense.
At noon, a black car came up the long gravel drive. Julian himself was in the back seat, in a dark-gray overcoat over a black sweater, though he’d said he’d be in the city all day.
He didn’t get out. He opened the door from inside and waited.
I left the annulment papers on the table and got in.
We drove in silence through the vineyards, past the rows of vines turning red and gold for October, down toward the highway. He didn’t look at his phone. He looked out the window at my family’s land as if he were memorizing it.
“Why my name?” I finally said. “On the license. You filed it three weeks ago. Before she ran.”
“Yes.”
“So you knew she was going to run.”
He turned and looked at me then. Dark-brown eyes, tired, very steady.
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said, “and then you’re going to want to get out of this car, and I won’t stop you. But please hear all of it first.”
“Fine.”
“Three weeks ago, your sister came to my office in San Francisco. She’d found something in your father’s files. Something that would put him in prison. She was frightened of what he’d do if he found out she knew.” He paused. “She asked me to get her out. Quietly. On a day when everyone in your family would be too busy to notice she was gone.”
The car hummed along the highway. I felt the seam in my side, even though I wasn’t wearing the dress anymore.
“Your sister didn’t run, Tessa,” Julian said. “I helped her leave.”
