“Eventually.”

I smiled back at him.

It cost me nothing, because by then I already knew things he did not.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I stepped out onto the porch to take it.

It was my father.

“Sylvie,” — he still used the old family nickname when it was just us — “the person you asked me to call is here.”

I looked back through the window at Damon, standing in the center of his applauding family, raising a glass to himself.