I didn’t say anything for a moment. I was calculating whether I had misheard her, and then whether there was a context in which those words meant something other than what they sounded like.
“Easier for everyone,” I said.
“It’s a vibe thing,” she said. “I love you, but you have a certain energy at family events, and Owen’s family is going to be there, and I just think the day will flow better without that dynamic.”
A certain energy. I had a certain energy.
I had also signed a contract for Willowmere Hall, a venue in the Hudson Valley that Claire had found online and fallen in love with and could not afford, and I had paid twenty-four hundred dollars as a nonrefundable deposit, and I had conditionally offered to cover the remaining seventy-two hundred as my wedding gift.
I thought about all of that while she waited for me to respond.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“I just want to make sure I understand what you’re telling me. You don’t want me at your wedding.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you there, it’s more that I think the day will be better –“
“Claire. Do you want me at your wedding?”
A pause. “I think it’s better if you’re not there.”
“Okay,” I said again. “Then I should let you know that my offer to cover the remaining balance at Willowmere is also going to need to be reconsidered.”
Another pause, longer this time.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I offered to pay for the venue as a wedding gift. If I’m not a guest at the wedding, the gift doesn’t really make sense.”