Vivi’s POV:
My alarm goes off at six-forty, and I’m out of bed before it finishes its first bar.
The rain stopped sometime in the night, leaving the garden below my window glossy and dark, the hedges dripping onto the gravel path. I do my stretches by the window—twelve minutes, the same twelve—and watch the sky go from slate to something paler over the east lawn.
The blue room’s window is dark.
I don’t look at it more than twice.
At seven-fifteen I’m in the kitchen.
The kitchen smells like coffee because I made it, and I made enough for two, which is not a decision I made so much as a thing my hands did while I was thinking about something else entirely.
I pour one cup.
Drink it standing at the counter.
The second cup sits in the pot, going bitter.
At seven-forty I’m still standing there.
At seven-forty-three my phone buzzes against the marble.
We exchanged numbers last night after the ridiculous argument in the kitchen, which apparently means Charlie now has unrestricted access to annoy me electronically.
Charlie: is the offer still good or did you change your mind at 3am like a coward
My thumb hovers over the screen.
Me: I don’t change my mind.
I send it.
Then stare at it.
That sounds like something a man in a Western says immediately before being shot.
I add:
Me: Eight. Don’t be late.
Three dots appear.
Charlie: define late
Me: After eight.
Charlie: brutal. ok. i’m putting on shoes. this is me putting on shoes.
I should leave it there.
Instead:
Me: Which ones.
There is a longer pause this time.
Charlie: why do you care which ones
Me: Because you’ll wear the wrong ones and complain about your feet all day and I’ll have to hear it.
Charlie: the sneakers. the ugly ones. i’m keeping the ugly ones.
Me: Good.
I set the phone face-down.
Then I pour the second cup into a travel mug before I can think about why I’m doing it.
Charlie comes down the back stairs at seven-fifty-eight with her hair still wet, her bag half-zipped, and one shoelace undone.
She stops in the kitchen doorway and looks at the travel mug on the counter like it might be a trap.
“That for me?”
“It was going to be poured out.”
She picks it up.
Sniffs it.
“Cream, no sugar.”
“You take it that way.”
“How do you—”
She stops.
Tilts her head.
“Breakfast. Yesterday. You watched me make it.”
“I watched you spill it on the counter, which was harder to miss.”
Charlie looks down at the cup again.
Something in her expression shifts, small enough that I might be imagining it.
Then she takes a drink.
“Good save.”
“I wasn’t saving anything.”
“Sure.”
I pick up my keys.
“Car. Now. You’re already going to make me late for my eight-thirty.”
“You have an eight-thirty on a Tuesday?”
“I have an eight-thirty every day.”
“God.”
She follows me through the mudroom, sneakers squeaking against the tile.
“That’s bleak. That’s genuinely bleak, Ashford.”
The Range Rover smells like leather and cold air.
Charlie folds her long legs into the passenger seat, wedges her bag between her knees, takes another drink of coffee—
and immediately puts both feet on the dashboard.
“Feet.”
“It’s a car, not a church.”
“Feet, Whitmore.”
She puts them down.
Ten seconds later, one foot appears again.
Just one.
Testing.
I look at it.
Then at her.
She stares straight ahead with the expression of someone who has absolutely no idea how her foot got there.
I let it go.
I do not examine why.
The road to campus runs along the river, past the old boathouse and the row of faculty houses with their shutters painted the same dark green.
Charlie watches everything go by like she’s cataloguing it.
“So what’s the eight-thirty?”
“Corporate finance.”
“Of course it is.”
I glance at her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means if I asked someone to invent a class specifically for you, they’d call it corporate finance.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“You would.”
“And what’s your eight-thirty?”
“Nothing.”
I look over.
Charlie grins into her coffee.
“I don’t have one. I have a ten.”
“Then why are you awake?”
“I could’ve slept another hour and a half.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Her smile changes.
Barely.
She looks out the window.
“Because I said I’d come at eight.”
I keep my eyes on the road.
The river flashes between the trees, grey and quick.
I don’t answer because there isn’t an answer that doesn’t sound like something, and I am not in the business of sounding like something.
We pull into the lot behind the humanities building.
Charlie drains the last of her coffee, drops the empty travel mug into the cupholder, and gets out.
She stretches beside the car like a cat, arms over her head, sweater lifting just enough to show a thin strip of skin at her waist.
I lock the car.
Look toward the building.
Anywhere else.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asks.
I turn.
She’s already backing toward the path.
“That’s not—”
She grins.
Then she’s gone, swallowed by the stream of students climbing the hill.
I stand beside the Range Rover with my keys in my hand.
The travel mug sits empty in the cupholder.
I never actually said no.
I don’t think about it for the full fifty minutes of corporate finance.
That is a lie.
A small one.
I’m good at small ones.
At eleven, I’m crossing the quad toward the library when a hand lands on my arm.
Warm.
Familiar.
I don’t have to turn.
“You’re early,” Nadia says.
“I’m on time.”
“There’s a difference.”
“There is.”
“And you know it, and you’re still early.”
Nadia Farouk falls into step beside me.
She’s five-foot-four, with dark skin, a cloud of curls she is perpetually pushing out of her face, and a capacity for good cheer that I once found exhausting and now mostly find useful.
We met at freshman orientation when we were paired for a campus scavenger hunt. Nadia talked continuously for two and a half hours.
I did not once tell her to stop.
In retrospect, that should have been my first warning.
“So,” she says. “How’s the house?”
“The house is fine.”
“How’s Catherine?”
“Cate is fine.”
“How’s Alexander?”
“My father is also fine.”
Nadia looks at me.
“You know exactly who I’m asking about.”
I continue walking.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Mm.”
“Nadia.”
“The stepsister.”
“She is not my stepsister.”
“Yet.”
I look at her.
She smiles.
“The wedding is in three weeks,” I say. “So ‘yet’ is the correct word.”
“Interesting that you felt the need to clarify.”
“It isn’t interesting.”
“Everything about you is interesting when you’re irritated.”
“I’m not irritated.”
“Sure.”
We cross the center of the quad.
Nadia waits approximately four seconds.
For Nadia, this qualifies as extraordinary restraint.
“You drove her to campus.”
I don’t change pace.
“How do you know that?”
“I saw you.”
“From where?”
“The coffee cart.”
Of course.
Nadia’s coffee addiction has created more problems than any substance legally should.
“She needed a ride.”
“You rearranged your morning.”
“I did not rearrange anything.”
“You usually park by the economics building.”
“Hawthorne is closer to her first class.”
Nadia’s eyebrows go up.
I realize the mistake immediately.
“You know where her first class is.”
“My father sent me her schedule.”
“And you memorized it?”
“I looked at it.”
“You memorized it.”
“I have a functioning memory.”
“Vivienne.”
“Nadia.”
She laughs.
“I’ve known you four years. You don’t voluntarily rearrange your routine for people.”
“She’s living in my house.”
“Exactly.”
I look over.
Nadia spreads her hands.
“Normally that would make you avoid her harder.”
“I’m not avoiding someone who lives twenty feet from me. That would be absurd.”
“You’ve done more absurd things.”
“I have not.”
“You took a different staircase for six months because Professor Talbot kept trying to ask you about his son.”
“He was insufferable.”
“His son?”
“Both of them.”
Nadia laughs again.
I keep walking.
“It’s practical,” I say.
“Of course it is.”
“She doesn’t have a car.”
“Practical.”
“We attend the same college.”
“Extremely practical.”
“And she has no sense of direction.”
Nadia looks delighted.
“I’m glad we agree.”
“I’m going to push you into that fountain.”
“No, you’re not. These boots are suede.”
We reach the library steps.
Nadia catches my arm again.
This time I stop.
Her expression has changed.
Not teasing now.
Just curious.
“What?”
She studies me for a second.
“Nothing’s going on.”
“No.”
“I know.”
Something in my shoulders loosens before I can stop it.
Nadia notices.
Naturally.
“But,” she says, “you’re interested.”
“I am not.”
“Not like that.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“You look offended.”
“I am offended.”
“That tracks.”
She shifts her bag higher on her shoulder.
“I mean you’re interested in her as a person. Which is weird for you.”
“That is incredibly insulting.”
“You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, I do.
“She noticed the lilies,” I say.
Nadia blinks.
“The what?”
“The lilies in the foyer. They’d been dying for three days.”
“Okay.”
“I hadn’t said anything.”
“Okay.”
“She walked in and noticed them immediately.”
Nadia waits.
I hate when she does that.
“She’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
I start up the steps again.
“Another one of Cate’s projects.”
“That’s mean.”
“It’s accurate.”
“Still mean.”
“Some polished girl who smiles at the right people and knows exactly which fork to use and spends three hours pretending not to care where everyone went to prep school.”
“And instead?”
I picture Charlie barefoot on the marble.
Her sneakers shoved into my armoire.
Her cigarette going unlit because her lighter didn’t work.
Her feet on my dashboard.
“She wears sneakers with designer bags. Leaves shoes in hallways. Eats standing over the sink.”
Nadia waits.
“It’s chaotic,” I finish.
“Ah.”
I narrow my eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Nadia.”
She loops her arm through mine and starts pulling me toward the library.
“You’ve spent your entire life being able to predict people within five minutes of meeting them.”
“That is not true.”
“It is absolutely true.”
“I don’t predict people.”
“You categorize them.”
“That is different.”
“It really isn’t.”
We reach the doors.
Nadia smiles.
“I think you met someone you can’t immediately sort into a box, and it’s driving you insane.”
“It is not driving me insane.”
“You made her coffee.”
“I had extra.”
“You hate that travel mug.”
“It fits in the cupholder.”
Nadia’s smile widens.
I open the library door.
“Say one more thing and I’m leaving.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
“I learned from the best.”
Blessedly, she changes the subject.
By the time we reach the third floor, she is complaining about her thesis advisor instead, and I let her voice wash over me while I pull my laptop from my bag.
I do not think about Charlie Whitmore’s foot on my dashboard.
Not once.
I think about it in the elevator.
That doesn’t count.
At two, I have a seminar in the east wing.
I take the long way.
There is no reason for this.
The weather is better.
That is a reason.
A weak one, but still.
I cross past the dining hall and student center.
My eyes move through the crowd automatically.
Backpacks.
Coats.
Faces.
A flash of wild brown hair catches at the edge of my vision.
Something behind my ribs moves before my brain does.
I turn.
Wrong girl.
The stranger lifts her head, and the something settles again like a dropped coin.
I walk faster after that.
At four, I’m in the library stacks pulling books for a case study when I find myself standing in front of the poetry section.
I don’t read poetry.
Not voluntarily.
Someone has reshelved half the section incorrectly.
Three books are lying sideways on top of the others.
I stare at them.
Charlie would leave them like that.
The thought arrives fully formed.
I put the books back where they belong.
Then I leave.
I drive home alone with the radio off.
Ashford House is quiet when I come in through the back door.
The way it always is.
The way I like it.
Long hall.
Low afternoon light.
Old wood and lemon polish.
I drop my keys into the dish and hang my coat.
Then I stop.
Music.
Faint.
Tinny.
Coming from the kitchen.
I follow it.
Charlie is standing at the island with her laptop open beside her and flour up to her wrists.
I stop in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
She looks up.
“Making pasta. Obviously.”
There is flour on the counter.
Flour on her sweater.
Flour, somehow, in her hair.
“You’re getting flour everywhere.”
“It wipes up.”
She holds both hands up.
White to the wrists.
“I found the machine in the pantry.”
I look past her.
The pasta maker.
Old stainless steel, clamped to the counter.
A neat row of pale ribbons rests on a tea towel beside it.
“That’s been in there since I was a kid.”
“Yeah, well, it had enough dust on it to qualify as an archaeological site, so I cleaned it.”
“You cleaned it.”
“I’m capable of cleaning things.”
“You left three coffee rings on the island yesterday.”
“That was yesterday’s Charlie.”
“Remarkable growth.”
“Thank you.”
She turns back to the dough.
“I used to make this with my grandma.”
Something in her voice changes on the last word.
Not enough to ask about.
Enough to notice.
I lean against the doorway.
Charlie is wearing an old sweater with a hole in one elbow, sleeves shoved up, forearms dusted with flour. Her hair is tied into a knot that appears to be surviving entirely through stubbornness.
She moves around the kitchen like she already knows it.
The right drawer.
The right bowl.
The cupboard where the olive oil lives.
My kitchen.
Our kitchen now, technically.
The thought irritates me.
I’m not sure why.
“You could’ve asked.”
Charlie’s hands stop.
She looks up.
The teasing disappears.
Not defensiveness.
Something more careful.
“Asked what?”
“Before you—”
I gesture vaguely at everything.
“Made yourself at home.”
For one second, neither of us moves.
Then:
“Do you want me to stop?”
I open my mouth.
Yes should be easy.
It is my house.
My kitchen.
My routines.
Everything has a place.
Everything stays where I put it.
“No.”
Charlie blinks.
I hate that she looks surprised.
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s just pasta.”
Her mouth starts to curve.
Slowly.
Crookedly.
“You want some.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She turns back to the dough.
“Sit down. You look like you’ve been carrying a building around all day.”
“I’ve been in class.”
“Same thing.”
I should go upstairs.
I have reading.
Emails.
A case study.
Instead, I pull out the stool at the end of the island.
Sit.
The music keeps playing.
Something old and low.
Charlie works the dough through the rollers, folds it, feeds it through again.
The kitchen smells like flour and olive oil and rain still drying on the gravel outside.
Neither of us talks for a while.
It is, I realize with a kind of quiet alarm, the most comfortable I have been all day.
Then Charlie says:
“So.”
I already dislike her tone.
“Nadia Farouk.”
My spine goes straight.
“You saw us.”
“Hard not to.”
She feeds another sheet of dough through the machine.
“She was hanging off your arm.”
“She was not hanging off my arm.”
“She was attached to it.”
“Nadia touches everyone.”
“Oh.”
Charlie says it lightly.
Too lightly.
I watch her hands.
“Why?”
She looks up.
“Why what?”
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m making conversation.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
She smiles.
“You really hate when people do that to you.”
“What?”
“Give you your own lines back.”
“Yes.”
“Good to know.”
I fold my arms.
Charlie’s smile widens.
Then she looks back down.
“She your girlfriend?”
“No.”
The answer comes out too quickly.
Charlie’s eyebrows lift.
“That was fast.”
“She’s my best friend.”
“Okay.”
“She’s married.”
“Okay.”
“To a woman.”
Charlie stops kneading.
Only for a second.
Then:
“Also okay.”
I should stop talking.
Instead, apparently, I say:
“I date women too.”
Silence.
Charlie’s hands go still in the dough.
There.
Half a second.
Maybe less.
Then they move again.
“Good to know.”
I watch her.
Her ears have gone pink.
Interesting.
“You asked.”
“Technically, I asked if Nadia was your girlfriend.”
“You were wondering.”
Charlie looks at me.
Really looks.
“You don’t know what I was wondering.”
I hold her gaze.
“Don’t I?”
Something changes.
Not much.
Enough.
Charlie breaks eye contact first.
Turns back to the pasta.
“Set the table, Ashford.”
I stay seated for one beat longer.
Then I get up.
The pasta is good.
Infuriatingly good.
I set the table while Charlie finishes the sauce, and I use the everyday plates instead of the good ones because there are two of us and using the good china for pasta would be ridiculous.
I put the plates down.
Charlie brings the bowl over and takes the chair beside mine.
Not across.
Beside.
I notice.
I do not move.
She twirls pasta around her fork.
“Well?”
I take a bite.
Charlie watches me.
I chew.
Swallow.
“It’s acceptable.”
Her mouth falls open.
“Acceptable?”
“It’s edible.”
“You’re a terrible person.”
“I’ve been told.”
“This is my grandmother’s recipe.”
“That does increase the pressure.”
“Vivi.”
“It’s very good.”
Her entire face changes.
She smiles.
Not the smirk.
Not the teasing one.
A real one.
Bright.
Immediate.
Something catches behind my ribs.
I pick up my wineglass.
“So your grandmother taught you?”
“Yeah.”
She looks down at her plate.
“For a while.”
I hear the door opening.
The one she isn’t opening yet.
I could push.
Instead:
“You used too much garlic.”
Charlie’s head snaps up.
“There is no such thing.”
“There absolutely is.”
“You take that back.”
“No.”
And the moment closes.
She starts talking about her seminar instead.
The professor who pronounces Foucault like a personal challenge.
A student who spent fifteen minutes arguing a point nobody had made.
I tell her about my case study partner, who emailed me four times between lunch and three.
“He sounds anxious.”
“He’s incompetent.”
“Those things can coexist.”
“He attached the wrong spreadsheet twice.”
Charlie winces.
“Oh. Kill him.”
“I’m considering it.”
“There she is.”
“Who?”
“The ghost of Ashford House.”
I roll my eyes.
She laughs.
It lands somewhere behind my ribs again.
I leave it there.
After dinner, Charlie does the dishes.
I dry.
“You cooked nothing,” she says. “Therefore you owe nothing.”
“That is not how dishes work.”
“That’s exactly how dishes work.”
“I provided the kitchen.”
“Congratulations on owning a room.”
“It’s my room.”
“Our room now, technically.”
She says it casually.
I look at her.
Charlie freezes with her hands in the sink.
“Oh, God. You hate that.”
“I don’t hate it.”
“You made a face.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely made a face.”
“I’m drying a plate.”
“Very judgmentally.”
I take the next plate from her.
She grins.
We fall into a rhythm without discussing it.
Wash.
Pass.
Dry.
Stack.
The window over the sink fogs from the heat of the water, and Charlie wipes a circle into it with the side of her wrist so she can see outside.
I catch our reflections in the glass.
Her beside me.
Me beside her.
For one strange second, it looks ordinary.
I look away.
At the bottom of the back stairs, Charlie stops with one hand on the rail.
“Same time tomorrow?”
I lean against the doorway.
“Eight.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
She smiles.
“Same time tomorrow, then.”
“Same time tomorrow.”
Charlie goes upstairs.
I listen to her footsteps cross the floor above me.
Then the small click of the blue room door.
The house goes quiet.
The way I like it.
I stand there for a while anyway.
It isn’t music this time.
It’s the particular rustle of tissue paper and ribbon spools, the scrape of boxes across wood, and someone moving things around on a table with great purpose.
I’ve only known Cate Whitmore closely for a matter of months, but it has been long enough to learn that she is incapable of organizing anything quietly.
I should turn around.
I have reading. I have a case study. I have a perfectly good room upstairs with a door that closes.
I walk toward the dining room.
The long table is almost unrecognizable.
Not gone—just stripped of its runner and buried beneath what appears to be the entire contents of a stationery store.
Cream card stock. Tissue paper. Ribbon. Small candles. Printed maps. Guest lists. Boxes stacked beneath chairs.
Cate stands at the head of it in a silk blouse with her sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair pinned up, a strip of ribbon between her teeth.
My father is at the far end with a printed spreadsheet and a pen, working through it line by line the way he works through everything.
“Vivienne.” Cate pulls the ribbon from her mouth. “Perfect. Come here, darling. I need your handwriting.”
“For what?”
“Escort cards.”
She waves a fan of small cream rectangles.
“The calligrapher cancelled. Food poisoning, allegedly. I need someone who can write in a straight line.”
“You want me to address two hundred cards.”
“Two hundred and forty.”
“That's worse.”
“You have lovely handwriting. You get it from your father.”
My father looks up.
“I have terrible handwriting.”
“You have lovely manuscript handwriting.”
“I don't know what that means.”
“It means when you try, people can read it.”
He considers this.
Then returns to his spreadsheet without comment, which is how my father concedes an argument.
Cate pulls out a chair.
I sit.
This is a mistake.
I know it is a mistake.
I sit anyway.
Charlie appears in the doorway ten minutes later, barefoot, holding a glass of water and still wearing the sweater she cooked in.
She takes one look at the table.
“Absolutely not.”
“Charlotte.” Cate doesn't even turn around. “Sit.”
“Mom. There's more paper in here than in the library.”
“There are two hundred and forty guests and I am one woman.”
“You have a wedding planner.”
“The wedding planner is at the resort.”
“Then send the paper to the resort.”
“Charlie.”
Charlie releases the sigh of a woman being marched toward execution and crosses the room.
She starts to pull out the chair across from me.
Stops.
For some reason, walks around the table instead.
Then drops into the chair beside mine.
I don't look at her.
“What am I doing?”
Cate points toward a collection of bags.
“Welcome bags. Tissue, card, candle, map. Assembly line.”
Charlie picks up one of the maps.
“There’s a map.”
“Of the resort.”
She unfolds it.
Her eyebrows rise.
“This place has stables.”
“Two,” Cate says.
Charlie looks up.
“Two stables.”
“One for the horses and one for the carriages.”
Charlie very carefully sets the map down.
“I’m going to need a minute.”
“You’re going to need a ribbon.”
Cate hands her one.
We work.
There’s no other word for it.
I write names in black ink across cream card stock while Charlie folds maps, knots ribbon, tucks candles into bags, and complains about approximately one in every four guests.
Somewhere in the middle of it, the complaining stops.
I don't notice when.
“Who is Bartholomew Vance?”
I don't look up.
“Old friend of my father's.”
“He sounds like a Dickens character who owns an orphanage for tax purposes.”
“He's a venture capitalist.”
“Worse.”
“He funded the new wing of the library.”
Charlie considers this.
“Morally complicated.”
“You'll be polite to him.”
“I'm always polite.”
I look at her.
She catches me looking.
“I'm polite in my own way.”
“Your way is going to get you disinvited from the wedding.”
“Can you get disinvited from your own mother's wedding?”
“You could probably manage it.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn't a compliment.”
“I took it as one.”
I finish the card in front of me and hold it out.
Charlie takes it.
Neither of us thinks about the exchange until it's already happened.
Across the table, Cate makes a small sound.
I look up.
She's watching us.
Her chin is propped in one hand, ribbon forgotten in the other, and she's wearing the same expression she wore last week when my father brought her flowers for no discernible reason.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Cate.”
“It's just—”
She gestures vaguely between us.
“Look at you.”
Charlie stops folding.
“What about us?”
“You're getting along.”
“We're addressing cards,” I say.
“And you're helping each other.”
“That's generally how an assembly line works.”
“Vivienne, you handed her that card before she asked for it.”
“It was the next card.”
“It was her next card.”
“There is no such thing as my next card,” Charlie says too quickly. “They're all cards.”
My father looks up from his spreadsheet.
“That isn't how assembly lines work.”
Charlie points at him.
“See, now you're making it worse.”
“I thought I was helping.”
“You weren't.”
“I'll make a note.”
I look down before Charlie can see my mouth move.
Cate sees it.
Of course she does.
Her smile becomes unbearable.
I pick up my pen.
After a second, Charlie picks up another ribbon.
The room settles again.
Twenty minutes later, Charlie holds up another card.
“Mrs. Garrison Halloway the Third.”
“Yes.”
“Her name is Mrs. Garrison Halloway the Third.”
“Traditionally, she's using her husband's name.”
Charlie stares at the card.
“So she married a man and lost not only her last name but apparently her first one too.”
“Essentially.”
“That is bleak.”
“It's traditional.”
“Those aren't mutually exclusive.”
I take the card from her.
“His family has been here since the eighteenth century.”
“Oh, good. So they've had several hundred years to come up with another name and simply refused.”
I write the table number.
Charlie watches.
“Do they just keep making Garrisons?”
“There are three.”
“Of course there are.”
I put the card in the finished pile.
“You're going to have to be nicer than this at the rehearsal dinner.”
“Says who?”
“Basic social convention.”
“You've met me.”
“Unfortunately.”
She laughs.
Across the table, Cate is watching us over the top of her guest list.
I turn the page of mine harder than necessary.
“Oh, before I forget,” Cate says. “The rooms are confirmed.”
Charlie keeps folding.
“What rooms?”
“For the night before. At the resort.”
Something about the sentence makes me look up.
Cate is writing something on her list.
“Alexander and I have the suite. It has the most gorgeous terrace. And you girls each have your own room on the floor below.”
“The girls,” Charlie mutters.
Cate ignores her.
“Separate rooms?” Charlie asks.
Cate finally looks up.
“Of course separate rooms.”
“I didn't say they shouldn't be.”
“You sounded surprised.”
“I wasn't surprised.”
“You looked surprised.”
“I have one face.”
I glance at her.
She catches me.
“Don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I wasn't.”
“You had the face.”
“What face?”
“That face.”
Cate laughs.
“Anyway, yes. Separate rooms. You're both adults. You deserve your own space.”
“Great,” Charlie says. “Love space.”
I look back down.
Write the next name.
My handwriting is slightly smaller.
I don't examine why.
At nine, my father stands.
“Tea?”
“Yes, please,” Cate says.
“Absolutely,” Charlie says.
I nod.
He disappears toward the kitchen.
Charlie watches him go.
“He does that.”
“Does what?”
“Just... gets up and makes everyone tea.”
“He likes taking care of people.”
She looks at me.
I regret the sentence immediately.
“He remembers things,” I add.
“Like?”
“Coffee. Tea. Birthdays. Where someone prefers to sit.”
I straighten the stack of cards.
“He remembered your mother's birthday the first year he and Cate were together. She'd mentioned it once.”
Charlie is quiet.
Then:
“That's the cream.”
I look at her.
“What?”
“This morning.”
She concentrates very hard on sorting ribbon.
“You remembered how I take my coffee. From one breakfast.”
“I watched you spill it.”
“You said that already.”
“Because it's still the answer.”
“Sure.”
She slides another stack of blank cards toward me.
I take them.
Neither of us says anything for a while.
It isn't a bad silence.
I notice, with the same distant alarm I've been experiencing all day, that I've stopped counting how many of those we've had.
“The Wainwrights are coming,” Cate announces.
Charlie groans.
“Both?”
“Both.”
“I thought Margaret would fake an illness.”
“She has better manners than that.”
“No, she doesn't.”
I look between them.
“Who is Margaret?”
Cate and Charlie answer simultaneously.
“No one.”
“Her mortal enemy.”
Cate glares.
Charlie grins.
“What?”
“Charlotte.”
“She deserves to know what family she's marrying into.”
I put down my pen.
“I already regret asking.”
“You haven't heard anything yet.”
“Which is why there's still time.”
Charlie ignores me.
“Your future stepmother was engaged to Margaret's brother for eleven months in 2004.”
“Charlie.”
“What? It's public record.”
“It is not public record.”
“It should be.”
Cate points a ribbon spool at her.
“There was a very small boat, a very large misunderstanding, and everyone involved has moved on.”
“Margaret has not moved on.”
“Margaret has a hobby.”
“Margaret has a scrapbook.”
I look at Cate.
She closes her eyes.
I look at Charlie.
Charlie is visibly delighted.
“I assumed everyone had a past,” I say.
Charlie slowly turns toward me.
Then smiles.
“Oh, you're good.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Dry as hell. You really are his daughter.”
“I wasn't making a joke.”
“That makes it better.”
“Stop encouraging her,” Cate says.
“I'm not encouraging anyone.”
Charlie points at me.
“See? She does this. She says something cutting and then acts like nothing happened.”
“I don't do that.”
“You absolutely do.”
“Charlie,” Cate says, “stop antagonizing her.”
“I'm not antagonizing her. I'm relating to her.”
“You're doing both.”
“They're basically the same thing.”
Cate laughs.
Charlie returns to her ribbon.
I return to my cards.
Something behind my sternum loosens by a degree I did not authorize.
My father comes back carrying a tray.
He sets Cate's tea beside her.
Then Charlie's.
Then mine.
Exactly the way each of us takes it.
Two sugars.
Correct.
Charlie notices.
I know she notices because she looks at my cup and then at me.
She doesn't say anything.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“Of course.”
He returns to his spreadsheet.
For a while, the only sounds are paper, ceramic, and the occasional clink of Charlie's spoon against her cup.
Then:
“Where'd you learn to write like that?”
Charlie nods toward the card beneath my hand.
I look at it.
“My mother.”
The answer leaves before I decide whether I want to give it.
Charlie doesn't immediately say anything.
“She was particular about thank-you notes,” I add. “Birthdays. Christmas. Anything.”
I draw the final stroke beneath a name.
“She said if someone took the time to give you something, you took the time to acknowledge it.”
That's enough.
I cap the pen.
Charlie looks at me.
She could ask something.
She doesn't.
Instead she pulls one of the spare maps toward herself, picks up a pen, and writes something in the corner.
Then turns it toward me.
Thank you for the coffee.
I look at it.
She goes back to folding as though she hasn't done anything at all.
I look at the words for one beat longer than necessary.
Then return to my list.
“We're going to run out of ribbon,” Charlie says sometime after ten.
“We aren't.”
“We are.”
“There are three spools left.”
“There are two.”
“Three.”
“Vivi.”
“Charlie.”
“There are two.”
“There are three because I counted them when you went to get water.”
She stares at me.
“You counted the ribbon.”
“Yes.”
“That's terrifying.”
“It's practical.”
“It's both.”
“Probably.”
She laughs.
A real one.
Short and low and involuntary.
It lands behind my ribs.
I look down at the cards.
“You're a very strange person,” she says.
“I've been told.”
“By Nadia?”
“Frequently.”
“I like her already.”
“Everyone does.”
Charlie ties off the ribbon.
“Do you?”
I look up.
Her eyes remain on her hands.
Too casual.
I recognize it because I do the same thing.
“She’s my best friend.”
“You said that already.”
“It's still true.”
“Okay.”
She reaches for another bag.
I reach for another card.
Neither of us says anything else.
The silence isn't hostile.
It isn't neutral either.
I don't have a category for it.
At half past ten, Cate stands and stretches.
“I'm going to bed.”
“Congratulations,” Charlie says.
Cate ignores her.
“And you two have been wonderful.”
“We've been held hostage,” Charlie says.
“You've been getting along.”
“We've been working,” I correct.
“Together.”
“That's generally how—”
“I know how an assembly line works, Vivienne.”
Charlie makes a choking noise beside me.
I turn.
She's hiding a laugh behind her hand.
Traitor.
Cate comes around the table.
She kisses Charlie on top of the head.
Then, without ceremony, she leans down and kisses mine too.
I go still.
Only for a second.
Cate doesn't seem to notice.
She squeezes my shoulder and continues toward the door.
“Good night, girls.”
“Night, Mom.”
“Good night.”
The door closes.
I look back down.
Charlie is watching me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
It's the first time she's given me the answer and actually meant it.
She looks away.
I don't ask.
A few minutes later, my father folds his spreadsheet.
“Don't stay up too late.”
“We won't,” Charlie says.
He looks directly at her.
“I know Vivienne won't.”
Charlie puts a hand against her chest.
“Wow.”
“Good night, Charlie.”
“Good night, Mr. Ashford.”
He pauses at the doorway.
“Alexander.”
Something in Charlie's expression softens.
“Good night, Alexander.”
He nods.
Then he's gone.
The dining room feels significantly larger with only the two of us in it.
Charlie looks at the remaining cards.
“We could stop.”
“We could.”
“There are, what, eighty left?”
“Ninety-four.”
She closes her eyes.
“Of course you know.”
“I counted.”
“Ninety-four,” she says. “Let's finish.”
So we do.
Somewhere in the middle of it, we stop talking.
Not because we've run out of things to say.
We simply don't need to.
She folds.
I write.
She sorts.
I stack.
She passes me cards before I ask.
I pass her ribbon before she reaches for it.
The table slowly empties.
Outside the tall windows, the grounds disappear into black.
The house settles around us.
Eventually, I write the final name.
Charlie drops the last bag into the box.
She sits back.
“That's it.”
“That's it.”
“We're heroes.”
“We addressed cards.”
“For a wedding with two stables.”
“One is for carriages.”
“That continues to make it worse.”
“It's traditional.”
“It's insane.”
“Both.”
Charlie smiles.
We start gathering the remaining supplies.
There's one small stack of unused cards between us.
I reach for it.
So does Charlie.
Our fingers meet.
Warm skin against mine.
Nothing more.
But my hand stops.
So does hers.
For one strange second, neither of us seems to remember which one of us was reaching for the cards.
I look down.
Her fingers are still against mine.
Then I look up.
Charlie is already looking at me.
Not smiling.
Not teasing.
Just looking.
Something low and unfamiliar turns over once in my stomach.
Charlie pulls her hand back.
“So.”
Her voice is perfectly normal.
She picks up the cards from the other side.
“I'll get the boxes.”
I straighten the stack that no longer needs straightening.
“Fine.”
That's it.
Nothing happened.
Our hands touched.
People touch constantly.
It means nothing.
From the hallway, Cate calls, “I forgot my phone!”
Charlie glances at me.
I glance at her.
And for some reason we both laugh.
Quietly.
At exactly the same time.
Cate appears in the doorway in her dressing gown.
She looks at the empty table.
Then at us.
“You finished?”
“Team effort,” Charlie says.
Cate beams.
“I knew you'd like each other.”
My laughter disappears.
Beside me, Charlie goes quiet too.
Cate doesn't notice.
She retrieves her phone.
“Good night again.”
“Night,” Charlie says.
The door closes behind her.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then Charlie picks up the last box.
“I should go to bed.”
“Yes.”
She takes two steps.
Stops.
“Eight?”
I look at her.
“Eight.”
“Okay.”
Then she's gone.
I stand alone in the dining room with the finished cards and empty ribbon spools.
I knew you'd like each other.
I pick up my pen.
Put the cap on even though it's already capped.
Then I turn off the light.