I signed. I wrote the check for twenty-four hundred dollars.
We went to lunch afterward in town, the five of us, and Claire was happy in the particular way she was happy when things were going according to her vision of how things should go. Owen couldn’t make it that day — a work thing in the city — but he texted Claire while we were at lunch asking how it went. She sent him a photo of the barn.
On the drive back to the city, I had a conversation with Claire about the remaining balance. I was explicit, but I was also informal, and I understand now that the informality was a mistake. I said something to the effect that I wanted to give her a meaningful wedding gift, and paying for the venue felt like the right kind of gift because it was something concrete and lasting. I said that my plan was to cover the seventy-two hundred in installments as they came due. I said that I thought the venue was beautiful and she was going to have a wonderful wedding.
What I did not say — what I did not think I needed to say, because it felt obvious to me — was that my gift was contingent on our remaining in the kind of relationship where a gift of this scale made sense. I did not say: if you uninvite me from the wedding, I will reconsider. I did not say that because it was September and the wedding was in April and the possibility of being uninvited from my own sister’s wedding had not occurred to me.