Chapter 3: Password
“You texted your mother my password.”
“I know.”
“In March. Seven months ago.”
“I know, Jen. I know.” He had his elbows on his knees and his hands over his face. “I thought she’d look at a seating chart. I didn’t think she’d… I didn’t think.”
There’s a version of me that would have thrown the pizza at him. I could feel her right there, under my ribs. But there was a clock running, and I’ve worked enough codes in the PICU to know that you deal with the airway first and the feelings later.
So I called Marisol back.
“Put it all back,” I said. “The original menu. Herb chicken, the vegetable risotto, the citrus salmon. No shellfish anywhere in the building. And I want to change how you verify me.”
“Already ahead of you,” she said. “From now on, no change to your order happens without a phone call to you, at this number, and a passphrase. Pick one.”
I looked at the place card still on the table, with its little string of dried glue. Carol Hart, Table 2.
“Table Two,” I said.
“Done. Nobody gets anything changed without saying Table Two to me in person or on the phone. Not your mom, not his mom, not the Pope.” Then she sighed. “About the fee. I can cancel most of the seafood with my supplier, but the lobster was special order. The cancellation fee is eighteen hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I’ll pay it,” I said. “Send me the invoice. Itemized. With the date and time of the email that ordered it.”
“Why itemized?”
“Because I’m not the one who’s going to pay it in the end.”
While I talked, Ryan was on my laptop. He changed my email password. Turned on two-factor authentication. Signed out every device on the account, including one iPad in Roseville. Then he did the same for the wedding Google Drive, our bank login and the venue portal, without my asking.
It didn’t fix anything. But it was something.
At 8:15, Ryan called his mother on speaker.
She picked up on the second ring, bright as a bell. “Hi, honey! Are you so excited?”
“Mom. Did you log into Jenna’s email and change the catering menu?”
Silence. Then a little laugh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Is that what this is about?”
“Did you?”
“I helped,” Linda said. “Everybody knows that chicken was bland. Tyler said so at the tasting. It’s a wedding, Ryan, not a hospital cafeteria. I was trying to give you a nice party.”
“Her mother could die,” Ryan said.
“Oh, please. Carol can eat the bread. I told you that months ago.” Her voice went sweet and patient, the voice she uses on waiters. “And frankly, honey, nobody’s ever actually seen this so-called allergy. People use those things for attention.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
“Mom,” Ryan said, very quietly, “we’ve switched the menu back. And you’re paying the cancellation fee.”
“I most certainly am not.” The sweetness was gone. “And if there’s no shrimp on Saturday, Tyler and I will make our own arrangements.”
She hung up.
Ryan stared at the phone. I stared at Ryan.
Then my own phone buzzed on the table. A text from my cousin Hannah, who’s on Ryan’s family group chat because she dated one of his cousins in college and nobody ever took her off.
Jen. I think you need to see what Linda just posted in the Whitaker family chat.
A screenshot came through.
Just so everyone knows, the bride’s mother is pretending to have a food allergy to ruin Tyler’s day. I’ve seen this before. Please don’t let them guilt you.
