“I’m not offering to make up the difference,” I said. “Not as a condition of being there or as part of sorting this out. I want to be clear about that.”
“I know,” Claire said. “We’re not asking.”
“What I am saying,” I continued, “is that if the two of you can get to a place where you’ve covered the balance and I’m receiving a proper invitation and the transfer process is handled through Jordan so that I’m formally released from the client contract, I will bring a wedding gift. A normal wedding gift. Not ninety-six hundred dollars, but something real.”
Owen nodded. “That’s more than fair.”
“We’ll figure out the seventeen hundred,” Claire said. “We’re looking at trimming the florals. The centerpiece thing that’s been the debate for six months — we might just let that go.”
She said the last part with a rueful smile that held the knowledge that the centerpiece debate had been, in some sense, one of the early pressure points that had contributed to where we’d ended up. I smiled back. It was not a fully healed smile. It was the kind of smile that two people manage when they are in the middle of something hard and they are choosing to keep going anyway.
We had another cup of coffee and talked about logistics. I said I would email Jordan in the morning to let her know to expect a transfer request from Claire and Owen. Owen said he would make sure Claire had everything Jordan needed. Claire said she would call my mother and let her know things were moving in a different direction than they had been.