Remy had played seventeen fathers and had been no better at any of them than at his own.
This was Tessa’s joke. She had made it at nineteen, and he had repeated it at dinners ever since, taking care to credit her. That morning she told him to stop.
“It isn’t an anecdote,” she said.
He was standing in the theatre corridor, dressed as a king. His phone had begun vibrating beneath the breastplate just as the wardrobe assistant fastened it. He had made her unfasten it again.
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He nearly said it was an excellent line. He put his free hand against the painted wall.
Tessa was getting married on Friday. He knew this from his former wife, who had also told him that Tessa had not decided whether to invite him. Now she was inviting him, with conditions.
“Nine forty-five at the registry. No theatre clothes. No photographs unless we ask. No speech.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t have to make it into a large thing.”
Remy waited for her to continue. She did not.
“Would you like me to—”
“Be there. That’s all.”
After the call, the wardrobe assistant asked if they could finish. He raised his arms. She buckled the breastplate and tugged his tunic straight beneath it. All his important appearances required someone else to straighten him.
The play was called The Winter Petition. He had toured it twice. His king lost a daughter, blamed an innocent man, and finally recognized the truth at the daughter’s grave. The grave scene was what audiences came for. Remy could keep a room silent for twelve seconds after his last word. He had timed it.
That afternoon they were rehearsing his understudy. Remy would be leaving after three weeks for a better-paid engagement; the company wanted a clean handover. He resented the practical necessity and admired himself for behaving well about it.
The understudy, Dev, was young enough to believe a note from Remy could fix anything.
“I can’t make the apology work,” he said.
Remy stood in the empty auditorium while Dev knelt at the painted grave. Dev’s voice was rich and careful. He had memorized Remy’s pauses, including the twelve seconds. The director stopped him before he reached them.
“You’re waiting for us to feel something,” she said. “Keep speaking to her.”
Remy disliked that note. He had never received it.
They began again. At the back of the stage, the apprentice playing the messenger missed his entrance. Dev waited, kneeling. The director called for a break.
The apprentice was named Ellis. He stood in the wings clutching his one page of lines.
“I was told not to move while the king is talking.”
“You enter on the silence,” Remy said.
“Which silence?”
It was a fair question. Remy used so many.
He took the page. The messenger came from the queen, carrying the daughter’s last letter. He had three lines, delivered it, and left. Remy had performed the play for six months without considering where that man went afterward.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Ellis thought this was an accusation. “To get it right.”
“The messenger.”
“To give him the letter.”
“Why?”
“The queen said to.”
Remy looked at the stage. The queen was sitting on a bench, eating an orange while the props manager repaired her broken chair.
“Ask her.”
The actress swallowed her orange and read Ellis’s page. She had been playing the queen for longer than Remy had played the king.
“I think you’ve promised me you’ll come back,” she said. “I want to know if he reads it.”
Ellis looked relieved. “So I don’t want to leave.”
“You have to. He sends you away.”
They tried the entrance without the king’s speech. Ellis crossed the stage too fast, offered the letter, then held it back when Dev reached for it.
“Sorry,” Ellis said.
The director leaned forward. “No. Keep that. You need to know he’ll take it.”
Remy watched them do it again. Ellis held the page until Dev looked at him. Then he let go. Sent away, he hesitated at the door just long enough to see the seal broken. Three lines. A man waiting for an answer he could carry to someone else.
The grave scene became shorter. Dev stopped one of the long pauses, read the letter, and said the apology as though he had not expected to find it in his mouth. The director let him finish.
Remy sat down.
He did not think the king was a bad role. He had loved it, and still did. But for the first time he noticed that everyone onstage had somewhere to return to when his grief was finished.
On Thursday evening he started writing a speech for Tessa. It was not a speech he intended to deliver. Merely a few words, in case she changed her mind.
He wrote about her birth, then her first bicycle, then the joke about seventeen fathers. He crossed the joke out. The first bicycle had been assembled by her mother. He had been in another city, telling an interviewer that fatherhood had made him a better actor.
He put the pages in a drawer.
At nine twenty on Friday he was outside the registry, in a blue suit that needed pressing at one knee. Tessa arrived with her partner, Mae, carrying a small paper bag. She stopped when she saw him.
“You’re early.”
“I wasn’t sure about the buses.”
He had taken a taxi. He did not know why he had lied. The buses sounded modest and domestic, things Tessa might approve of.
“Actually, a taxi,” he said.
She looked at him, then handed him the bag.
“Can you hold these? Mae’s sister can’t find the entrance.”
Inside were two buttonholes, wrapped in damp paper. He held them while Tessa walked to the corner. Mae stood beside him, checking her phone.
“We’re glad you could come,” she said.
“Thank you.”
He wanted to tell her how deeply he regretted the years when Tessa had stopped expecting him. Mae was waiting for a message from her sister. He let her wait.
The ceremony was upstairs in a plain room with a clock that ticked loudly. There was no aisle. Remy sat in the second row beside his former wife. She asked whether he had an afternoon train. He said yes. She nodded and turned back toward Tessa.
When asked for the rings, Mae discovered they were in the coat she had left downstairs. Remy stood before anyone had quite decided whose task it was.
“Which pocket?”
“Inside left. Grey coat.”
He went down, found the little box, and came back. He did not run. The stairs were steep, and he was carrying something that mattered. Mae took the box and mouthed thank you. He returned to his seat.
Afterward they stood on the steps for one photograph. Tessa asked him to move closer. He moved closer, neither putting his arm around her nor leaving a conspicuous gap. She took his elbow.
At the café, Mae’s sister offered him the little table knife and asked if he was going to say something.
“No,” he said.
It came out more sharply than he intended. He smiled at her. “We’ve got cake.”
Tessa, across the table, looked up from cutting it. She gave him a piece with too much icing. That had always been his preference, and it startled him that she remembered.
He ate it while they talked about the afternoon. They had plans that did not include him. At a quarter to one he thanked Mae, kissed Tessa when she leaned toward him, and got his coat.
Outside he called the theatre. He asked the stage manager to give Ellis a note: the entrance had looked good, and he should keep watching for the seal to break.
Then Remy walked to the station.
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