It said: “I know you’re upset but please don’t do anything with the venue yet. Let’s talk first.”
I stared at this for a while.
The message told me a few things. First, that Claire had been thinking about the practical implications of the phone call. Second, that she understood, on some level, that the practical implications were significant. Third, that her instinct was to ask me not to act rather than to rescind what she had said or apologize for it.
I appreciated the honesty of the third thing. She was not, in this text, trying to undo the conversation. She was trying to buy time before I took action. That was a more realistic position than trying to pretend the conversation hadn’t happened.
I texted back at seven-fifteen, when I had had coffee: “I’m going to call Jordan this morning to understand my contractual options. That’s not doing something — that’s getting information. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
She didn’t respond to that before I called Jordan.
The call with Jordan went as I described. When I hung up, I sent the text to Claire with the numbers laid out plainly, and then I sat at my desk in my home office and thought about what I had just done and whether it was the right thing.
It was not dramatic. That is the part that I want to be honest about. I have read accounts of family conflicts where the aggrieved person makes some sweeping gesture, some unilateral dramatic declaration that changes everything in a single moment. That is not what happened here. What happened was that I called a venue coordinator, explained a change in circumstances, asked about a contract clause, and then sent a factual text to my sister. It was, in terms of its emotional temperature at the moment I did it, quite calm. The drama was in the situation, not in me.