Inside the church, guests shifted impatiently.
Jenna, at the front, was smiling with increasing strain as she watched him glance from the phone to the screen to the entrance and back again. The priest paused, uncertain whether this counted as a hiccup or a crisis. Your sister-in-law leaned toward the aisle, whispering something probably poisonous and self-important. The photographer kept shooting, because photographers are either artists or vultures and wedding photographers are trained to be both.
Then your son pressed play.
The first sound was traffic.
The second was Jenna’s laugh.
And the third was a man’s voice saying, “So once he signs after the church thing, how long before the trust money unlocks?”
Your son went white.
Because there, in crystal-clear audio recorded three weeks earlier in the parking garage of a prenatal clinic Jenna had never actually entered, was his fiancée speaking in the low, smug, practical tone people use when they believe they are completely alone.
“He doesn’t even know what he’s inheriting,” she said. “His mother controls everything until he proves he’s stable, and all she’s done is stall. But once we’re fully married and the baby is here, she loses leverage.”
The male voice laughed softly. “If the baby is here.”
