Chapter 1 — The Root of Perfection

Margot

I was ten years old when I learned that nothing in life was certain—not promises, not people, not love. Certainty, I decided that day, was something you had to build for yourself.

It was a Tuesday, because Tuesdays were Dad’s “late-night work meetings.” That’s what he told my mother, anyway. I remember the smell of her lasagna lingering in the air, a rare treat for a weeknight. She had been humming to herself earlier, upbeat in a way that felt contagious. Everything about the night felt safe, predictable, like the rhythm of a song you’ve known all your life.

Until Dad didn’t come home.

The hours stretched on, tightening around the house like a noose. The tick of the clock grew louder, filling the silence between creaks of the floorboards. My mother sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she wasn’t drinking. She had started the night with her usual composure, but the cracks were there if you looked closely—her fingers tapping an uneven rhythm against the porcelain, the occasional tremble in her breath as she exhaled.

I sat across from her, my homework untouched, pencil frozen mid-equation. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong but stopped, my fingers clutching the edge of the table. The question hung in the air, unspoken but heavy. I already knew.

By midnight, the phone rang. My mother snatched it from the receiver before the first ring finished, her voice sharp and clipped.

“Where are you?”

The voice on the other end was muffled, but I could hear the low hum of Dad’s voice through the receiver. Her fingers tightened around the phone, her nails pressing into the plastic.

“You promised,” she said, her voice breaking on the last syllable.

She turned away from me, her free hand gripping the counter for support. Whatever Dad said next made her shoulders sag, her head dipping forward as though the weight of his words physically pressed down on her. She didn’t yell. That was the worst part. She only listened, her lips pressed into a thin line, her jaw set like stone.

When she finally hung up, she stood there for a long moment, staring at the phone as if it might ring again. She wiped her cheek quickly, like she thought I wouldn’t notice, and then turned back to me.

“Go to bed, Margot,” she said, her voice quieter now, almost hollow.

I obeyed without question, but sleep didn’t come. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to the faint sounds of my mother moving around the kitchen. Cabinet doors opened and closed. The faucet ran for longer than it needed to. Plates clinked softly as she rearranged them in the cupboard.

By morning, he was gone.

He left a note, though I never read it. My mother burned it in the kitchen sink before I could ask. I watched the flames devour the paper, the blackened edges curling in on themselves like a secret folding into ash. The smell of charred paper lingered in the air long after the fire had died.

“Margot,” she said, her voice quiet but firm as she turned to me. Her hands were steady now, but her eyes were red-rimmed. “We’re going to be okay.”

I wanted to believe her, but something in her tone made me doubt. I nodded anyway, because I didn’t know what else to do.

For the rest of the day, she moved through the house with a forced cheerfulness that only made the emptiness more obvious. She cleaned the already spotless counters, hummed the same fragment of a song over and over, and made me grilled cheese for lunch, even though I wasn’t hungry.

I noticed small things that felt wrong. A crooked picture frame on the wall. The faint imprint of Dad’s shoes by the door, still visible even though he’d taken them with him. The sound of the radio, which my mother kept turning on and off, as if she couldn’t decide whether she wanted noise or silence.

By late afternoon, she handed me a gift, wrapped in paper that was too cheerful for the occasion.

“Here,” she said, crouching to my level. Her smile was too tight, her voice soft but laced with something fragile. “This will help you keep things in order, no matter what happens.”

Inside was a leather-bound planner, navy blue with gilt edges. It felt expensive in my hands, like something borrowed from the desk of a polished professional, not a child’s possession. The leather was smooth under my fingertips, the gilded edges catching the light from the kitchen window.

“You can write down everything you need to do, every plan, every goal,” she explained, her voice faltering slightly. “Planning helps. If you plan well enough, maybe things won’t go so wrong.”

I didn’t fully understand what she meant, but I nodded again, clutching the planner to my chest.

That night, I wrote my first list. I sat cross-legged on my bed, the planner open in front of me, the faint scent of fresh ink filling the air as I wrote. The pencil felt heavy in my hand at first, as though the act of writing carried more weight than I realized.

Chores. Homework. Pack lunch for school.

The words seemed insignificant, but as I wrote each one, I felt a strange sense of relief, like I’d pulled a small thread of order from the tangled mess of the day. Writing gave me a sliver of control over the chaos.

From that moment on, I became the girl who planned.

I planned my days down to the minute. I planned for contingencies, for worst-case scenarios, for the possibility that someone might leave again. My planner became an extension of myself, its pages filled with neatly penciled lists and careful strategies. It was my armor, my anchor, my proof that I could keep the world from falling apart if I just tried hard enough.

Even now, decades later, I can still feel the weight of that first planner in my hands. Its smooth leather cover, the faint scent of ink and paper, the promise of control it seemed to hold.

But as I sat at the Glass Chapel all those years later, staring down the aisle at the man who was supposed to be my future, I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother had been wrong.

Maybe some things are destined to go wrong, no matter how perfectly you plan them.