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**Part 3**

Lily made it to twenty-seven before she lost count and decided the lanterns were “basically infinity.” She let go of our hands to spin once under the nearest arch, white dress flaring, then came back and took Evan’s hand again like the spin had been a scheduled stop on the route.

“Did the man with the shiny watch know you before?” she asked.

“A long time ago,” I said.

“Before me?”

“Before you.”

She considered that with the seriousness she usually reserved for deciding which cupcake had more frosting. “He looked surprised.”

“He was.”

Evan kept his voice low. “You all right?”

“Yes.” The answer came easily. The garden path was strung with warm bulbs that turned the boxwood into soft green walls. Music from the reception drifted over the hedges, thinned by distance. “I thought it would feel heavier. It doesn’t.”

We reached the small stone bridge that crossed a dry creek bed. Lily stopped to drop a leaf over the side and watch it disappear. While she negotiated with gravity, Evan rested his forearms on the rail beside me.

“Hart & Calder’s name is on the bid packet he lost,” he said. “He’ll put it together before the cake is cut.”

“I know.”

“You want me to say anything else if he comes back around?”

“No.” I watched Lily lean farther than necessary and corrected her with one hand on the back of her dress. “He already heard the only part that matters. The rest is just numbers on a page he didn’t win.”

Lily retrieved a second leaf, declared it “the winner,” and skipped ahead again. We followed at the pace she set. Near the end of the path the lanterns opened onto a side lawn where a few guests had drifted away from the main reception. Abigail stood there in her reception dress, shoes already abandoned in the grass, talking to her new husband. She saw us and waved us over.

“There you are,” she said. “I was about to send a search party. Nathaniel found me ten minutes ago. He asked whether you’d really built the firm that beat his numbers on the waterfront job.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you’d answer him yourself if he wanted the story.” She smiled, tired and pleased. “He didn’t stay long after that. Brooke looked like she wanted the car.”

Evan huffed a quiet laugh. Lily had already attached herself to Abigail’s skirt and was explaining the leaf race in detail. Abigail listened with the focus of someone who had spent the entire day being the center of attention and was happy, for a moment, to be an audience instead.

“You look good,” Abigail said to me when Lily paused for breath. “Not just the dress. You look like you’re where you’re supposed to be.”

“I am.”

We stayed another few minutes. Lily extracted a promise of one more dance before the bouquet toss. Evan checked his watch, then checked it again when Lily informed him that time didn’t count at weddings. When we finally turned back toward the terrace, the main lawn was brighter, the band louder, the crowd thicker. I saw Nathaniel once, near the bar, speaking to a man I didn’t recognize. He glanced in our direction. I met his eyes long enough to nod. He returned the nod, small and stiff, and looked away.

That was the last time I saw him that night.

Later, after the sparklers and the last slow song, we carried a sleeping Lily to the car. She had danced until her curls stuck to her forehead and then folded sideways in her seat with one shoe still on. Evan loosened the buckle of the other shoe and set both on the floorboard. I slid into the passenger seat and watched the estate lights shrink in the side mirror as we pulled down the long drive.

“She’ll ask more questions tomorrow,” Evan said.

“I’ll answer the ones she actually wants answered.” I rested my head against the seat. The day had been long in the way good days sometimes are—full, not heavy. “He wanted me to still be measuring. I stopped doing that a while ago. Tonight just made it obvious.”

Evan reached over and set his hand on mine. Lily murmured something about infinity lanterns and subsided. The road unspooled ahead of us, dark and ordinary. Behind us the wedding kept its own hours. Ahead, the house would be quiet, the morning would bring pancakes if Lily remembered to request them, and the company inbox would fill with the usual Monday questions. None of it required Nathaniel’s opinion to proceed.

I closed my eyes for a minute and listened to the tires on the pavement. When I opened them again, Evan was still driving, Lily was still asleep, and the rearview mirror showed only the empty road we had already left behind.