Part One: The Hall
The venue had been selected with the specific care of someone who understood that the setting of a wedding was itself a statement about the people being married.
Le Domaine des Lys was forty minutes outside the city, down a road lined with plane trees whose branches met overhead in a canopy that made arriving feel like moving through something ceremonial. The main hall was white stone and high ceilings and enormous windows that looked out over a formal garden that had been arranged, for the occasion, with white flowers and small lanterns that would come into their own when the light changed in the evening.
Isabelle Fontaine had chosen all of it.
She had been planning this wedding for fourteen months, which was how long she and Renaud had been engaged, and she had brought to the planning the same quality she brought to most things in her life: a combination of genuine taste and a need for everything to be seen to be right. The flowers were from a specific florist in the seventh arrondissement. The photographer had a waiting list. The caterers were the caterers you mentioned by name when you wanted people to understand what category the event occupied.
By any external measure, the day was a success.
The guests numbered one hundred and twelve, drawn from what Isabelle thought of as the right circles: her family, Renaud’s family, colleagues from the consulting firm where she worked, friends from university whose trajectories had gone in acceptable directions. She had done a seating chart that had required three revisions and two arguments and that she believed, finally, was correct.
Her sister Claire was seated at table seven.
Table seven was toward the back — not at the edge, not invisibly, but not at the front. This too had been a decision.
Claire was twenty-nine, three years younger than Isabelle. She was getting married in four months to a man named Thomas Lefebvre, who was also at table seven, placed next to Claire. They had been together for two years. He was quiet, attentive, and did not work in finance or law or consulting. He ran a small business — or that was how Isabelle described it, which was accurate in the way that summaries were accurate, which was to say partially.
The day proceeded through its stations with the smooth inevitability of an event well organized. The ceremony in the garden chapel was brief and emotional in the appropriate places. The cocktail hour on the terrace was warm and animated. The dinner began at seven-thirty, which was exactly when Isabelle had scheduled it.
The speeches were planned for eight-fifteen, after the first course.
Isabelle had prepared hers.
