You don’t get to leave in it.”

“Natalie,” Grant hissed, suddenly alive again, suddenly concerned with dignity.

“For God’s sake.”

I turned to him.

“You gave away something that didn’t belong to you.”

Becca drew herself up.

“I’m not undressing in a church.”

“Then find a coat, call a rideshare, and send it back by tonight,” I said.

“Dry-cleaned.

Unaltered if possible, though I can see you made sure of that.”

Her mouth tightened.

For one irrational second I thought she might actually argue.

Then Martin spoke again.

“Miss Thornton,” he said mildly, “as counsel for Victor Hale’s estate, I should advise you that possession of stolen property is an unfortunate detail to display in public after being identified by the owner.”

She stared at him.

There it was.

The soundless collapse of the little fantasy she had built.

She walked out without another word.

Grant remained where he was, breathing hard, caught between fury and calculation.

He wanted to run after her.

He wanted to talk me down.

He wanted the room to forget.

Most of all, he wanted control, and it was the one thing no one was willing to give him anymore.

“Sit somewhere else,” I told him.

He blinked.

“What?”

“You are not family today.”

He actually flinched.

Then he moved.

He did not leave the cathedral.

That would have required a kind of honesty he did not possess.

Instead, he took a seat near the back, alone, where everyone could see him and no one had to pretend he belonged in front.

The service resumed.

Father Martinez spoke about my father’s brilliance, his discipline, his impossible standards, and the private tenderness he hid under sarcasm.

He spoke about loyalty.

He spoke about legacy.

I heard only pieces of it because grief had opened again under everything else, raw and real.

When the final hymn began, I cried for the first time that day.

Not because of Grant.

Because my father was gone.

Because even in death, he had protected me in the language he knew best.

Because he had listened when I doubted myself.

Because one of the last things he did on this earth was make sure I would not be cornered into confusion by a man who thrived on it.

After the burial, Grant tried to approach me in the cemetery.

The wind had picked up, cold enough to sting.

People were drifting back toward their cars in clusters, speaking softly, clutching programs, glancing at us with varying degrees of fascination and pity.

Grant caught up to me near the line of black sedans.

“Natalie, please,” he said.

“Can we talk privately?”

I kept walking.

“This is not what it looked like.”

I stopped then and turned.

The audacity of that sentence after everything else was almost operatic.

“Really?” I asked.

“Then what did it look like?”

He looked around, lowering his voice.

“Becca got attached.

I was trying to end it.”

There it was.

The confession shaped like self-defense.

“How generous of you,” I said.

“It didn’t mean anything.”

That one made me laugh.

Not because it was funny.

Because men so often reach for that line when they think minimizing the betrayal will minimize the damage.

“You stole from me,” I said.

“You humiliated me at my father’s funeral.

You lied