Nicole went upstairs to the master bedroom and surveyed the room. On the desk she saw a thick stack of paper and walked over to look at it more closely. It was the contact list Red had mentioned, along with phone numbers and addresses.
It was simply enormous. It would surely take them hours and hours to go through all of these people and decide who could come and who could not.
She flipped through and felt a simple, pure rage at his refusal to make even the slightest attempt to assist her with the guest list.
“Fifty people?” she muttered. “Fifty people?”
There was simply no way they could cull this list down to fit a wedding size of fifty people. Not unless Red’s intention was to insult almost every friend, contact, and family member in existence, by only inviting a handful of the hundreds of people he knew.
Nicole’s blood was boiling. She called his cell phone and it went directly to voicemail. Rather than leave a message, she hung up.
What to do with this list? She asked herself.
No answer was forthcoming. She supposed she would just have to wait for his return late that night and hope he would deign to give her a paltry few minutes of his precious time for her silly wedding planning.
Nicole slammed the thick book of contacts back on the desk and started to leave the room. Just then, she heard the loud ring from the downstairs phone, the one that was connected to the security gate.
She ran downstairs and answered, breathless.
“Ma’am, this is Derek, out front with security.” He explained that Danielle was at the front gate and requesting to be let in.
Surprised that Danielle hadn’t bothered to call her in advance, Nicole told him to of course let her through.
Then she went out front to wait for her friend.
A couple of minutes later, a yellow cab pulled up out front and Danielle got out, sobbing—her face a mask of tears. Nicole instantly had the horrible sensation that Kane Wright was dead.
“Oh my God, Danielle, what happened?”
Danielle could barely speak through her sobs. Nicole literally couldn’t understand her. “Come and sit down,” Nicole said, trying to calm her. “Tell me what happened.”
The cabbie got out. “Hey, she said you’d pay me?”
Nicole looked up. “Oh. Yes, sure. How much?”
“Eighty-seven fifty,” he told her. Nicole quickly went and got her credit card and paid the driver, who promptly left.
Danielle was still sobbing on the front steps
Nicole was growing concerned and frustrated with her friend’s inability to speak a coherent sentence. “Danielle, you need to tell me what’s going on.” She sat down and took her by the shoulders. “Can you do that?”
Danielle nodded, still wailing. She started to speak but it was gibberish mostly, garbled by her wracking sobs.
Nicole went and got her a glass of water and then came back. “Here, drink this,” she said, rubbing the girl’s back. Danielle was without shoes, wearing only a light summer dress. Her hair was disheveled. She had no purse, nothing with her, no phone.
Maybe she’s been assaulted or raped. If it was Kane, Nicole thought, then he was going to pay big time for this.
Finally, Danielle’s tears began dissipating enough for her to speak and be understood. “I had to get away from him,” she cried.
“Of course you did, sweetie. Did he hurt you?”
Danielle began to shake. “I decided to make him an omelet this morning. Broccoli and cheese,” Danielle said. “I got up early and got everything ready so that when he came to the kitchen he’d have fresh orange juice, coffee, and eggs just the way he likes it.”
Nicole listened attentively, waiting for when the first punch would be thrown. She looked at Danielle’s face, searching for bruises, but she didn’t see any. “And then what happened?”
“He took one…b…b….bite,” Danielle said, turning to Nicole and bursting into a fresh round of tears. “And then…”
Oh, no, here comes the punch, Nicole thought, bracing herself for it.
“And then he said he needed to show me a thing or two about making an omelet.” Danielle started to cry. Snot bubbled from her nose.
Nicole just stared at her. There has to be more, she told herself. Be patient because there has to be more than this. “It’s okay,” she soothed, rubbing Danielle’s shaking back again.
“Kane got up and started making a brand new omelet,” she said. “He told me to come over and watch so I could learn the proper way to do it. And he was talking about this famous French chef who’d taught him and it was so rude and insulting.” Danielle was crying again now, not as out of control as before, but the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “He was so…so…condescending…and mean. He’s a big bully. I told him so. And he told me that I’m just na?ve and ignorant of the wider world or something. And then I yelled at him and he yelled back at me and…and…I left. I had to get out of there.”