Happenstance

by Tessa Bailey

Especially from Elise’s parents. The weekend we met them for the first time takes up an entire five pages in my scrapbook. The napkin her mother wept into when we broke the news. A transcript of her father’s phone call to the police. The label off the bottle of whiskey he drank when the police informed him no laws were being broken. A picture of their faces when Tobias told Elise’s parents how he made his fortune. A shard of the plate that Elise’s father threw at Tobias’s head. That was an interesting weekend, to say the least, but it ended in Elise’s parents being overjoyed for their daughter. Finally believing her claim that she’d never been happier. The final picture in that weekend’s section of the scrapbook is the six of us posing in front of our new house, a SOLD sign swinging in the breeze to our left.