She closed the door and said she wasn't interested in discussing my marriage unless I wanted to discuss it. She was, however, interested in the fact that two promotional campaigns were behind schedule and the junior designer was doing work I had promised to handle. I started explaining the comments, the sleepless nights, the family tension. Opal held up a hand. "You don't have to be perfect while you're going through something hard," she said. "But I need to know whether I can count on you to tell me early when you can't manage an assignment." I knew precisely what she meant. She wasn't asking me never to struggle. She was asking me not to hide my struggle until it became someone else's emergency.
I apologized and asked her to help me reset the calendar. She did. For the next six weeks I went to work early, wrote down tasks before opening my messages, and accepted help without blaming the people offering it. The first successful campaign after the cookout advertised late-season stays for couples who wanted quiet weekends away from crowds. I almost laughed at the irony when I saw the finished photographs. In one, two hands rested together on a balcony rail. Nothing about the image promised excitement. It promised company, and I felt a grief so sharp I had to leave my desk for a moment.
In August, Tessa asked me to go with her to choose flowers for her wedding. Our mother was supposed to join us, but a volunteer event ran late, so the two of us drove to a greenhouse outside town. As Tessa compared white garden roses and small blue flowers I couldn't name, she spoke carefully about the seating plan. Ben's relatives would fill three tables. Our cousins and aunts would take two more. She had assumed Nolan would be my guest, and now she didn't know whether asking him to attend would seem like taking sides.
I told her not to worry about me. She said she wasn't worried about me; she was worried about him having to make a decision under pressure. The distinction stung. "I was your sister before he was your brother-in-law," I reminded her. She touched the stem of a rose and said, "And I love you. That doesn't mean I have to stop caring about him." I was ready to be offended. Then I remembered all the ways Nolan had become part of our family without demanding anything in return: painting Dad's porch, taking Tessa's dog to the veterinarian during a storm, picking up Ben from the airport after a delayed flight. I had no right to ask people to erase that history because I had endangered our marriage.