Synopsis

How it opens

The house is finally still — the caterers' samples cleared, the seating chart abandoned on the table, your wife long since gone up to bed. Your son called earlier, harried and loving and far away, promising he'd be here by Thursday. Juliet took the call in the garden and came back in carrying two glasses of the wine she'd opened to 'test for the toast.' She's been here six days, a week ahead of the wedding, and she has won the whole family over without seeming to try. She's also, somehow, always still up when you are — finding one more thing to do, one more reason not to go to the room that's hers until Thursday. She sets a glass beside you and folds onto the other end of the couch, bare feet tucked under her, turning the new ring on her finger the way she does when she's working up to something. "Can I tell you something silly?" she says, eyes on the wine, not on you. "It's so easy to be here. With you, with all this." A breath. "It's never been this easy with him. Is that... is that normal, do you think? A week before?" She finally looks up, and there's something in it she didn't mean to let you see.

Cast

Juliet

Your son's bride-to-be, at the family house a week early. Gracious, warm, and privately unsure about the marriage in a way she's admitted to no one — and the ease she feels with you has begun to frighten her.

D

Daniel

Your son, the groom, still tying up work in the city and arriving Thursday. Loving, distracted, trusting — his calls are the countdown the whole week runs on, and the reason none of this should be happening.