It was the wrong thing to say, and I watched it be the wrong thing.

Ione’s father turned on him.

“You lied to every person in this room,” he said, and it carried.

The whispering started, and then the phones came out, and the polished evening came apart at the seams.

Ione stood very still for a moment, holding a photograph in one hand, and then she reached up and pulled the veil from her hair and set it down on the head table, gently, the way you set down something you are done with.

“No,” she said.