The counters were empty. The refrigerator, when she opened it, contained a half-empty bottle of ranch dressing, a jar of pickles, and a stick of butter still in its wrapper.
She walked to the patio. The string lights were hanging, but dark. She reached for the switch and pressed it. Nothing happened because the switch was connected to an extension cord that ran along the bottom of the fence, and the extension cord had been unplugged when the rental company removed the tables, and Heather Callaway had never once in her life plugged in those lights. That had always been Morgan’s job.
Everything had always been Morgan’s job.
The patio was concrete, flat, empty. No tables, no chairs, no linens, no centerpieces, no flower arrangements, no speakers, nothing except a single forgotten citronella candle sitting on the ledge near the back door, left over from a barbecue in July that Morgan had also planned.
Heather called Morgan. The phone rang four times and went to voicemail. She called again. Voicemail.
She called Brian. Brian was in the garage, which is where Brian goes when he does not want to be part of something. He came inside, looked at the patio, looked at the kitchen, looked at Heather.
“Where is everything?” Heather said.
Brian opened the refrigerator, closed it, opened the pantry, closed it, looked at the empty counters where twenty-four hours earlier there had been containers of food labeled in Morgan’s handwriting, stacked in the order they would be needed.
“I think Morgan took it,” he said.
“Took what?”
“Everything.”
Heather called the caterer. She did not know the caterer’s name. She scrolled through her own phone looking for a number she had never dialed because Morgan had always made the call. She found nothing. She called Morgan again. Voicemail. She called Kayla and told her to come early, that there was a situation, that Morgan had done something. She was not sure what, but something was wrong.
Kayla arrived at 7:30. Logan was driving. Kayla was wearing a white dress with small gold buttons down the front, the kind of dress you buy when you expect to be photographed and congratulated and handed glasses of champagne by people who love you. She had curled her hair. She had spent forty minutes on her makeup.
She walked into the house and stopped.
“Mom, where is everything?”
Heather was standing in the kitchen, phone in one hand, the other hand flat on the counter, the way you brace yourself when the ground is moving. She had been crying, not dramatically, quietly. The kind of crying that happens when a woman who has built her entire identity on being in control discovers that the thing she was controlling was never hers.
“Morgan left,” Heather said. “She canceled everything. The caterer, the rentals, the flowers, all of it. It was all under her name, her credit card. She canceled it.”
Kayla looked at the empty patio, at the dark string lights, at the refrigerator door hanging open with nothing behind it.
“She canceled the food, too?”
“She took the food. This morning, she said she needed to finish prepping at home. She took it and she left.”
Logan stood in the hallway holding a bottle of wine they had brought as a gift, watching two women he had known for less than two years discover something they should have known for fifteen. He did not say anything. He is an accountant. He was calculating.
At eight o’clock, the guests began arriving. First was Mrs. Wynn from across the street, carrying a casserole dish and wearing a floral blouse she had ironed for the occasion. She walked up the driveway and noticed that the house was darker than expected. The porch light was on, but the backyard was black. She rang the doorbell.
Heather opened the door. Her mascara had migrated. Her new blouse had a wrinkle across the front where she had been leaning against the counter. Mrs. Wynn looked past her into the dark house.
“Heather, is it a surprise party?”
Heather’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“It’s certainly a surprise,” she said.
More guests arrived. Couples in nice clothes, bottles of wine, congratulations cards with checks inside. They stood in the living room, which had no additional seating because the thirty chairs were in a warehouse in Round Rock. They held their wine bottles and looked at each other and spoke in low voices, the way people speak at events that are clearly not going as planned, but nobody wants to be the first to say so.
Heather tried. She went to the kitchen and opened cabinets looking for something to serve. She found crackers. She found a bag of pretzels from a brand she did not recognize, left over from some previous event Morgan had organized. She put them in a bowl and carried them to the living room.
Thirty adults dressed for an engagement party eating stale pretzels from a mixing bowl.
Uncle Ray asked where the pulled pork was. Aunt Donna asked where the tables were. Someone asked if they should order pizza.
Brian was leaning against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed, looking at the floor the way he always looks at the floor when something is happening that he should have prevented. Then he straightened up, walked to the refrigerator, and opened it one more time, as though something might have materialized in the past forty minutes.
Ranch dressing, pickles, butter.