"You found time to show me sixteen photographs of wedding chairs last week. You found time to ask me about the color of napkins. You didn't find time to tell me my sister was trying to reach me because my father was in the hospital?"
Her eyes filled. "Please don't say it like that."
"Which part isn't true?"
Rachel sank onto the arm of the sofa, careful not to disturb one of the boxes. She looked younger suddenly, not because she was innocent but because she was afraid of what the next minute would require. For four years I had seen that expression and moved toward her, ready to soften anything difficult. This time I stayed where I was.
"You told me what happened when your father left," she said. "You told me about the nights your mom waited for him, about the money, about all the promises he broke. You said you were finally at peace with not having him in your life. When that letter came, you were happy. We were planning the wedding. I didn't want him to reach into our lives and ruin things again."
I thought of the last time I had seen my father. It was nearly ten years earlier, in a diner in Wisconsin, where he had ordered coffee and promised that his drinking was behind him. He'd been sober just long enough to look me in the eye and say what I wanted to hear. Four weeks later he missed a meeting we'd arranged, and I found out he'd spent the weekend in a hospital following another relapse. I had told Leah I couldn't keep participating in a cycle I knew by heart. She accused me of giving up on someone who was trying. We exchanged unforgivable sentences. Then the calls became rare, and eventually stopped.
Rachel knew all that. She knew how much effort it had taken me to accept that I couldn't fix my father. She had no way of knowing whether I'd want to see him now. Neither did I. That was precisely why her decision cut so deeply.
"You could have stood beside me while I made that choice," I said.
"I was trying to keep you from getting hurt."
"You were keeping me from finding out. Those aren't the same thing."
"I was scared."
"Of what?"
She looked down. "That he'd come back, and suddenly everything would be about him. That I'd be the woman telling you to be careful while you went chasing another promise. That we'd lose what we'd built."
I waited, trying to fit the words into something coherent. Then I asked the question I was most afraid to hear answered. "Did Leah ever follow up?"
Rachel's face changed again. A small movement around her eyes, the kind I had learned to read when she was choosing what part of a truth to tell. She shook her head too quickly.
"Not that I remember."
I looked at her phone lying faceup on the coffee table. She followed my glance and pulled it toward herself. I hadn't asked to see it. I didn't need to. Something was being guarded, and we both knew it.
"If you have more to tell me," I said, "tell me now."