There it was.
I read it twice more. The mechanics were clear: if I, Claire, and Jordan all agreed in writing, and did so within the thirty-day window, I would be released from the seven-thousand-two-hundred dollar balance. The twenty-four hundred was gone regardless — that was the deposit, paid and forfeited to me by the contract’s own terms. But the remaining obligation was transferable.
This was not cancellation. This was not default. This was not any kind of hostile act toward the venue or toward Claire’s wedding. It was a legitimate provision in the contract that existed precisely for situations where the original client needed to hand off the financial responsibility.
I thought about whether I should wait before calling Jordan. Give it a few days, see if Claire called back, see if there was some version of a conversation that resolved things without the contract needing to be invoked. I thought about this for maybe five minutes.
Then I thought: the thirty-day window. The wedding was six weeks out, which meant I had about twelve days before the window closed. Waiting five days meant waiting nearly half of the available time.
I set an alarm on my phone for eight-thirty the next morning and wrote in it: Call Willowmere.
Then I reviewed the project timelines I had been supposed to review all evening, and I finished my wine, and I went to bed.
## The Text Claire Sent at Midnight
I was asleep when my phone buzzed with Claire’s message. I saw it in the morning when I woke up at six-thirty, bleary, and reached for my phone out of habit.