Eleven thousand four hundred dollars. Room, catering, the upgraded flowers Vivienne chose, the champagne she added, all of it itemized across two pages, with the deposit I had already paid marked as applied and the balance left open. I had not canceled the party. I had simply removed my card, which Emmett was legally obliged to do the moment I asked.
Vivienne put her own card down in front of forty guests. It declined. My mother paid it, and my parents spent the next fourteen months paying it off, and not one person at that table offered to split it.
Beatrix called me the next morning. She was eighty-four and she laughed for a full minute before she could speak, and then she said something I have thought about ever since: that a family will let one person carry everything right up until the second they have to look at the weight.
