Vivi's POV:
Coffee first.
That’s the rule now, apparently.
Or it was the rule until yesterday, when I came downstairs at 7:58 and found Charlie standing in my kitchen with two mugs already poured.
It was going to be poured out.
My own excuse, handed back to me without even the decency to pretend it was original.
I thought about it twice yesterday.
Three times last night.
I do not think about it this morning.
I make coffee.
Hers first.
Cream, no sugar.
Mine black.
I set both mugs on the counter and immediately resent the fact that I no longer have to think about which one goes where.
Charlie comes down at 7:52.
Six minutes early.
That’s new too.
Her hair is still damp from the shower, wild around her shoulders, leaving a dark patch across one side of her sweater. She has one shoe tied and the other apparently functioning on optimism.
She doesn’t say good morning.
She picks up her coffee.
Drinks.
Then looks at the machine.
“You put too much water in the reservoir again.”
I look at the reservoir.
“I put exactly the right amount of water in the reservoir.”
“It was over the line.”
“What line?”
She looks at me over the rim of the mug.
“There’s always a line, Vivi.”
I stare at her.
She smiles into her coffee.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It made sense when you said it.”
“I have never said that.”
“You’ve said it spiritually.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is before eight.”
I finish my coffee.
She finishes hers.
We leave at eight.
Exactly.
Charlie has her feet on my dashboard before we clear the driveway.
“Feet.”
“They’re clean.”
“They’re on my dashboard.”
“It’s leather.”
“That is not an argument.”
She wiggles one sneaker.
I look at it.
Then at the road.
I should make her move them.
I don’t.
This is not permission.
It is an allocation of resources.
I have limited energy before eight-thirty, and using any of it to argue with Charlotte Whitmore about basic respect for other people’s property would be inefficient.
She would also put them back the second I looked away.
I know this because she’s done it three times.
The music starts automatically.
Cello first.
Then guitar.
Then the low voice Charlie spent the first several mornings trying to identify until I finally told her it was Portuguese.
She taps her thumb against the door.
Off-beat.
She does it every time she likes a song.
I noticed on Wednesday.
I don’t know why I know that.
“You’re doing it again.”
She turns toward me.
“Doing what?”
“The tapping.”
“What about it?”
“It’s off-beat.”
“It’s syncopated.”
“It’s wrong.”
She keeps tapping.
I turn the volume up two clicks.
She smiles out the window.
I see it in the reflection.
I look back at the road.
We haven’t talked about the reception.
This is deliberate.
At least on my part.
I assume it is on hers too.
We have not discussed the burgundy dress.
We have not discussed Tess Morgan.
We have not discussed Charlie standing across a crowded atrium laughing too loudly at something Tess said and then turning her head directly toward me.
We have certainly not discussed the fact that I was already looking at her when she did.
Charlie texted me afterward to complain that I hadn’t insulted her shoes.
I exercised restraint.
She told me not to do it again.
Then:
still ugly
And then I told her eight.
That was the end of it.
Which is good.
It was nothing.
There is nothing to discuss.
I turn into campus.
Charlie’s thumb is still tapping.
I know without looking.
I pull into my reserved space behind Hawthorne and cut the engine.
Charlie reaches for the door.
“Charlie!”
She turns.
So do I.
A woman is jogging toward the car from the sidewalk, dark hair pulled back, bag slipping from one shoulder.
I recognize her immediately.
Tess Morgan.
I don’t know why.
There were at least two hundred people at the reception.
I spoke to dozens of them.
Tess Morgan was not one of them.
She was simply standing with Charlie for approximately twenty minutes.
There is no reason I should remember her.
I do anyway.
Charlie gets out.
“Hey. Morning.”
Tess stops beside her.
“I was hoping I’d catch you.”
Charlie leans against the open passenger door.
Tess smiles.
Charlie smiles back.
I reach for my bag.
Slowly.
“Are you free later?” Tess asks. “I was thinking coffee. That place on College Street with the terrible pastries.”
“The one with the terrible pastries is terrible.”
“I know. That’s why I like it.”
“That’s a terrible reason to like something.”
“You want to go or not?”
Charlie laughs.
“Yeah. What time?”
“Four?”
“Four works.”
I get out of the car.
There is no reason for me to get out of the car yet.
My building is in the opposite direction.
I have seven minutes before I need to leave.
I get out anyway.
Tess glances toward me.
Her eyes move from me to Charlie and back again.
“Oh. Sorry. Are you two—”
She makes a vague gesture between us.
“Roommates?”
“Something like that,” Charlie says.
“Our parents are getting married.”
The words leave my mouth before I have considered whether they need to.
Charlie turns toward me.
Slowly.
Tess blinks.
“Oh.”
A beat.
“Wow. Congratulations?”
“Thank you.”
Charlie is still looking at me.
I don’t look at her.
There is nothing strange about correcting an inaccurate assumption.
We are not roommates.
Our parents are getting married.
Those are facts.
I prefer facts.
“Well.” Tess recovers. “Four, then?”
“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Four.”
Tess touches Charlie’s arm.
Lightly.
Briefly.
Her fingers land just above Charlie’s elbow.
I notice because I am standing directly beside them.
Obviously.
“See you then.”
Tess walks toward the humanities building.
Charlie watches her go.
I put my bag over my shoulder.
“Vivi.”
“You’ll be late.”
“I have twenty minutes.”
“Then you have plenty of time.”
I start toward the east path.
Charlie catches up.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Our parents are getting married.”
“They are.”
“I know they are.”
“Then I’m not sure what the confusion is.”
“She asked if we were roommates.”
“And we aren’t.”
“We live in the same house.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Charlie looks at me.
I keep walking.
“So you were being accurate.”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
There’s something in the word.
I don’t like it.
At the fork in the path, I stop.
Charlie stops too.
Her building is left.
Mine is right.
“I’ll see you at four,” I say.
Her eyebrows rise.
“I have coffee.”
Right.
Of course she does.
“I meant afterward.”
“Sure.”
I turn before she can say anything else.
I make it halfway to the business school before I realize I have no idea why I told her I’d see her at four when she had just made plans for four directly in front of me.
My first class is corporate finance.
I correct Professor Halpern twice.
The first time, he is wrong.
The second time, he isn’t.
I realize this approximately thirty seconds after I’ve done it.
He raises one eyebrow.
I look back down at my notes.
At eleven, I reorganize the files on my laptop.
At eleven-fifteen, I reorganize them again.
At eleven-thirty, I move three articles from one research folder to another and then move them back because the original categorization was objectively better.
At twelve-oh-five, Nadia drops into the chair across from me in the student center.
She puts a coffee beside my laptop.
I look at it.
Then at her.
“What?”
“You look like you need it.”
“I have coffee.”
“You have an empty cup.”
“I had coffee.”
“Drink.”
I take the cup.
Nadia pushes a curl out of her face and studies me.
I dislike it immediately.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Nadia.”
“You’re reorganizing.”
“I’m working.”
“You’ve moved that article three times since I sat down.”
I close the folder.
“There.”
“Terrifying.”
“I have a lot to do.”
“Mm-hm.”
She opens her own coffee.
I try to read.
She waits.
I make it through two paragraphs.
“Charlie has coffee with Tess Morgan at four.”
Silence.
I look up.
Nadia is staring at me.
I close my eyes.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I actually wasn’t. I was processing the fact that you apparently know who Tess Morgan is.”
“She was at the reception.”
“So were two hundred other people.”
“She spoke to Charlie.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That.”
“I said one syllable.”
“It was a loaded syllable.”
Nadia takes a drink.
“Okay. Who’s Tess Morgan?”
“Someone from Charlie’s seminar.”
“How do you know that?”
I pause.
Charlie mentioned it at the reception.
Or Tess did.
Someone did.
“I heard them talking.”
“Of course you did.”
“She asked Charlie for coffee this morning.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Nadia waits.
I take a drink.
The coffee is terrible.
“She asked if we were roommates.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“You live together.”
“That does not make us roommates.”
“It sort of does.”
“Our parents are getting married.”
Nadia goes very still.
Then slowly lowers her cup.
“What?”
“That’s what I told her.”
“Tess?”
“Yes.”
“When she asked if you were roommates.”
“Yes.”
Nadia presses her lips together.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Why?”
She fails.
A laugh escapes.
I stare at her.
“Oh, Vivi.”
“I corrected an inaccurate assumption.”
“Of course you did.”
“We are not roommates.”
“Right.”
“Our parents are getting married.”
“I know.”
“Then why is this funny?”
“Because you could’ve said, ‘We live together.’”
“That would have been incomplete.”
“Or, ‘Our parents live together.’”
“Also incomplete.”
“Or you could’ve let Charlie answer.”
I open my mouth.
Close it.
Nadia’s smile softens.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“I know what this is.”
My stomach does something unpleasant.
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re territorial.”
I stare at her.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Nadia leans back.
“Vivi, your entire life is a routine. You drink the same coffee. Drive the same route. Park in the same space. Study in the same places. You have had the same Sunday tennis reservation for three years.”
“Consistency is useful.”
“Exactly. And now Charlie is part of it.”
“She lives in my house.”
“Our house,” I correct internally.
I hate that my brain does that.
Nadia continues.
“You drive her to campus. You make her coffee. You know her schedule. I’m assuming she does something deeply irritating in your car every morning.”
“She puts her feet on the dashboard.”
“Of course she does.”
“She does it deliberately.”
“And you still drive her.”
“It’s practical.”
“There it is.”
I narrow my eyes.
Nadia smiles.
“She got folded into the routine.”
“She needed transportation.”
“And now someone else shows up and takes a piece of the routine.”
“No one is taking anything.”
“Tess is.”
“Tess is getting coffee with her.”
“Exactly.”
“That has nothing to do with me.”
Nadia takes another drink.
“You’re the one who told me about it.”
I hate her.
I look down at my laptop.
The same paragraph is still open.
“I’m not saying you’re jealous,” Nadia says.
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
She says it too easily.
That irritates me too.
“I’m saying you’re territorial about your routines. Charlie became one of them faster than you expected. So when she suddenly changes the schedule, you notice.”
I consider this.
It is logical.
Reasonable.
Entirely non-emotional.
“Yes.”
Nadia’s mouth twitches.
“Yes, what?”
“That’s what it is.”
“Okay.”
“It’s the schedule.”
“Sure.”
“Nadia.”
“I agreed with you.”
“You’re doing it incorrectly.”
She laughs.
“I have class.”
“Good.”
She stands.
Then stops.
“For what it’s worth?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I think it’s nice.”
“What is?”
“That someone can disrupt your routine enough to become part of it.”
I look at her.
She smiles.
Then leaves before I can answer.
I stare at the empty chair.
Then at my laptop.
I move the article back into the original folder.
At 3:47, my phone buzzes.
I know who it is before I look.
I do not examine that either.
Charlie: don’t need a ride. getting coffee
I read it.
Once.
Then again.
She told me this morning.
I knew.
There is no reason for the message to annoy me.
It is considerate.
She is telling me not to wait.
I type:
I know.
Delete it.
Type:
You told me.
Delete that too.
I lock my phone.
Three minutes later, I unlock it again.
The message is unchanged.
Obviously.
I put the phone facedown.
At four, I finish class.
At four-oh-seven, I answer two emails.
At four-twelve, I walk to the parking lot.
At four-fifteen, I get into my car.
I should leave.
I don’t.
There are emails I can answer here just as easily as at home.
At four-twenty-three, I answer one.
At four-twenty-nine, I check tomorrow’s reading.
At four-thirty-six, I realize I have read the same page twice.
At four-forty, the passenger door opens.
Charlie gets in.
I look at her.
She puts her bag between her feet.
“You said you didn’t need a ride.”
“I know.”
“I was already here.”
Charlie looks through the windshield.
The parking lot is almost empty.
Four cars.
Mine included.
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing?”
“I had a thing.”
“What thing?”
“A thing.”
Her mouth twitches.
I start the engine.
She puts on her seat belt.
She doesn’t say anything else.
Which is worse.
I don’t turn the music on.
I don’t realize this until we’re already on the main road.
Charlie realizes it too.
I can tell.
She looks at the console.
Then at me.
She doesn’t comment.
For once.
The silence stretches.
“Tess asked me out.”
My hands stay loose on the wheel.
“I gathered.”
“How?”
“She wasn’t subtle.”
“Neither were you.”
My fingers tighten.
Slightly.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“At the reception.”
I keep my eyes on the road.
“You were watching me.”
The sentence lands between us.
Simple.
Direct.
True.
I could deny it.
I almost do.
Instead:
“You were watching me too.”
Silence.
Not our normal silence.
Not coffee silence.
Not library silence.
Not the easy quiet that has somehow become possible between us.
This one has edges.
I can hear Charlie breathe.
I can hear myself breathe.
I can feel her looking at me.
I don’t turn.
A mile passes.
Maybe two.
Then:
“Your shoes are ugly.”
I blink.
“What?”
“Those loafers.”
I glance down reflexively even though I know exactly what shoes I’m wearing.
“They’re ugly.”
“They’re Italian.”
“They’re still ugly.”
“They’re handmade.”
“That just means someone spent a really long time making ugly shoes.”
A laugh tries to escape.
I stop it.
Mostly.
Charlie sees.
Of course she does.
“There she is.”
“Who?”
“The person who knows I’m right.”
“You’re not.”
“You almost laughed.”
“I breathed.”
“That wasn’t breathing.”
“Your standards for humor are extremely low.”
“And yet you keep laughing at me.”
I look at the road.
She looks out the window.
The silence afterward is different.
Still not normal.
But softer.
I turn the music on.
Charlie’s thumb starts tapping against the door before the first song reaches the chorus.
Off-beat.
I let it.
Ashford House is empty.
Cate’s car isn’t in the drive.
The foyer lights are on, but the kitchen is dark.
There’s a note on the counter in Cate’s handwriting.
Wedding tasting with Alex, back late! Left money for dinner. Love you both! xx
A twenty-dollar bill is tucked beneath it.
Charlie picks it up.
Stares at it.
Then at me.
“Does she think twenty dollars feeds two people?”
“She probably thinks we’re ordering pizza.”
“Does she think pizza costs twenty dollars?”
“I don’t think Cate has personally ordered a pizza since 2007.”
Charlie laughs.
She puts the money back.
“There’s pasta.”
“I know.”
“I bought it.”
“I know that too.”
She opens the pantry.
I get down two bowls.
Neither of us discusses this arrangement.
Charlie puts water on the stove.
I get glasses.
She finds garlic bread in the freezer.
I preheat the oven.
It happens with the same strange efficiency as the wedding cards.
No discussion.
No assignments.
We simply move around each other.
At some point, Charlie reaches behind me for the olive oil.
Her arm brushes mine.
Neither of us comments.
That is becoming another rule.
I set two places at the table.
We eat at the island.
I don’t know why.
Charlie takes the stool beside mine.
I don’t ask why.
Halfway through dinner, she reaches over and takes a piece of garlic bread from my plate.
I look at her.
“That was mine.”
“It was on your plate.”
“That is generally what makes something mine.”
She eats it.
I look back at my pasta.
Thirty seconds later, she takes another.
“You have your own.”
“Yours tastes better.”
“They came from the same tray.”
“Yours tastes better.”
“That is objectively impossible.”
“Yet here we are.”
I should move my plate away.
Instead, I push it two inches toward the center.
Not toward her.
Toward the center.
There is a difference.
Charlie notices.
She doesn’t say anything.
She just takes another piece.
After dinner, we end up in the library.
Again, there is no discussion.
Charlie has a paper due Friday.
I have a case study.
The library has better lighting than the sitting room.
That is why we are here.
Nothing else.
Charlie takes one end of the leather sofa.
I take the other.
She sits with her feet tucked underneath her and her laptop balanced on one thigh.
I sit correctly.
She tells me that sitting correctly is “deeply unsettling.”
I tell her posture is not a personality defect.
She says mine is.
We work.
For a while.
Charlie reads with her hair falling into her face.
She pushes it back.
It falls again.
She pushes it back.
It falls again.
After the fifth time, I say, “Tie your hair up.”
She looks at me.
“Why?”
“Because you’re clearly annoyed by it.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve moved it five times.”
“You counted?”
“No.”
“You just said five.”
“Estimate.”
“Liar.”
I look back at my laptop.
She smiles.
A few minutes later, she ties her hair up.
I don’t notice.
Obviously.
At some point, she steals my almonds.
“You have your own.”
“Yours taste better.”
“They are literally from the same container.”
“Yours have absorbed your personality.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re judgmental.”
I look at her.
She eats another.
I move the bowl closer.
This is becoming a problem.
At nine-thirty, Charlie stops typing.
I notice because she is almost never completely still.
At nine-thirty-seven, I look over.
She’s asleep.
Her laptop is still open beside her.
A book rests facedown against her chest.
One sock is halfway off.
Her hair escaped whatever she did to it hours ago and is spread across the leather cushion beneath her head.
She looks—
I stop the thought before it finishes.
She looks asleep.
That is sufficient.
I return to my case study.
I read three paragraphs.
Retain two sentences.
From the other end of the sofa, Charlie shifts.
Her book slides sideways.
I catch it before it hits the floor.
She doesn’t wake.
I set it on the table.
Then sit back down.
My screen waits.
I read another paragraph.
Tess Morgan asks Charlie out.
The thought appears from nowhere.
I stare at the screen.
This is irrelevant.
Charlie is twenty-one.
Tess is presumably twenty-one or twenty-two.
They are both single.
Charlie can date whoever she wants.
Obviously.
I scroll.
I don’t read anything.
Tess could have her coffee.
I stop.
What?
I look at Charlie.
She’s still asleep.
This is ridiculous.
Not her coffee.
Coffee.
With Charlie.
Tess could learn that Charlie takes cream and no sugar.
She could learn that Charlie taps her thumb against the car door when she likes a song.
That she puts her feet on dashboards specifically because she’s been told not to.
That she steals food from other people’s plates even when she has the exact same food on her own.
That she pushes her hair out of her face five times before admitting it’s bothering her.
That she goes quiet when something actually matters.
That she jokes when she doesn’t want to answer.
That she says fine when she means almost anything except fine.
I stare at Charlie.
I have known her eleven days.
Eleven.
That is not enough time to know this much about anyone.
None of these things belong to me.
The thought arrives so clearly that I almost resent it.
Of course they don’t.
Charlie doesn’t belong to anyone.
Certainly not me.
There is no reason the idea of someone else learning these things should bother me.
It doesn’t.
I look back at my screen.
I read the same sentence four times.
Charlie shifts again.
Her arms fold tighter across herself.
She’s cold.
That is an actual problem.
Practical.
Solvable.
I get up.
There’s a throw folded over the back of the chair by the fireplace.
I take it.
Shake it out.
Drape it over her.
Charlie stirs.
Her eyes barely open.
“Vivi?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“You’re bossy.”
“You’re drooling on the sofa.”
Her eyes close again.
“Liar.”
She pulls the blanket higher.
I stand there for a second.
Then go back to my end of the sofa.
I open my laptop.
My case study is exactly where I left it.
The house is quiet.
The fire shifts in the grate.
Charlie breathes slowly at the other end of the sofa.
This is the kind of quiet I have always preferred.
Nothing demanding anything.
Nothing moving.
Nothing unexpected.
I look at the blanket.
My blanket.
On Charlie.
Ridiculous.
I return to my case study.
I read the same sentence again.
Then again.
I don’t retain a word.
Something warm crosses my face.
Not the blanket. Light.
I open my eyes to the library ceiling—the coffered one with the plaster rosette in the center, which I have looked at perhaps four times in my life, none of them lying down.
My neck is bent at an angle that will require apology later.
My case study is open on the cushion beside me, screen gone dark, battery presumably drained to nothing. The fire is out. Somewhere past the tall windows, the garden has gone from black to gray.
And there is a sound coming from the doorway.
A small, delighted, entirely unguarded sound.
“Oh my God.”
I sit up so fast my spine protests.
Cate is standing in the arch of the library doors in a silk robe the color of champagne, one hand pressed flat against her chest, her hair still in its overnight twist.
She is looking at the sofa.
She is looking at me.
She is looking at the other end of the sofa, where a person is buried under my throw blanket with only a thatch of chestnut hair and one bare foot visible.
“What,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Cate’s voice has gone up an octave. “Nothing is wrong. Don’t move.”
“I’m not moving.”
“You moved.”
“You told me not to move after I had already moved.”
“Vivi.” She holds up one manicured hand, palm out, like I’m a dog she’s trying to keep off a clean floor. “Do not move. This is precious.”
I look down at myself.
I am wearing what I wore to class yesterday. My blouse is creased across the ribs. One of my earrings has migrated to the cushion somewhere near my hip.
Across the length of the sofa—an entire body’s length, the full distance of the leather—Charlie is a lump under gray cashmere with her mouth open.
“There is nothing precious about this,” I say.
The lump shifts.
“Mm,” says the lump. “Whass happening.”
Cate clasps her hands together.
“My girls had a sleepover.”
Charlie’s head comes up off the cushion.
Her hair is doing something structural. There is a seam pressed into her cheek from the leather, a red line running from her jaw to her temple like a scar that will fade by nine.
“I’m going back to sleep,” she announces.
She lowers her face back down.
“We did not have a sleepover.”
Cate tilts her head.
“You slept. Together. In the same room.”
“By that definition, every commercial flight is a sleepover.”
Cate laughs—a real one, bright and startled, the laugh she does when she hasn’t decided yet whether she’s allowed to be this happy.
She crosses the rug and sits down on the edge of the coffee table, which she has never once, to my knowledge, sat on because it’s a Chippendale and she knows it.
She does it now without looking.
“Do you know,” she says, “I lay awake the whole first week we moved in? Alex kept telling me I was being ridiculous. He said, ‘They’re adults, Catherine, they’ll sort it out.’ And I said, ‘Alexander, my daughter has never sorted anything out in her life. She has only ever left a trail of things behind her and hoped someone else would pick them up.’”
“That’s a very flattering portrait,” says the blanket.
“And then I come down for my tea,” Cate continues, “and here you both are. Asleep. Like—”
She gestures at the two of us with both hands.
“Like sisters.”
Something in the room goes very still.
Not visibly.
Not in any way Cate could notice.
But I feel it from my end of the sofa to the other, a single held beat, the way a piano string keeps ringing after the key comes up.
Charlie makes a sound into the cushion.
“Bit early for family bonding.”
“It’s seven-thirty,” Cate says.
“Exactly.”
The string goes quiet.
Footsteps sound in the hall.
My father appears in the doorway with a cup of tea in each hand, still in his shirtsleeves, reading glasses pushed up into his hair.
He takes in the scene the way he takes in everything—slowly, without any visible reaction, the way a man looks at a balance sheet that has already been audited.
“Good morning,” he says. “Vivienne. Did you finish the case study?”
“No.”
He hands one cup to Cate and keeps the other.
“Then Cate is correct,” he says. “The situation is tragic.”
From under the blanket, muffled:
“I like him.”
“Thank you, Charlotte,” my father says gravely.
He takes a sip of tea.
Cate is beaming at the two of them like a woman at a wedding photograph.
I stand up, which takes longer than it should because my left leg has gone to sleep, pick my earring out of the cushion, and put my laptop under my arm.
I do not look at the sofa.
“I’m going to shower.”
“Breakfast in twenty,” Cate calls after me. “Alex is making the eggs. He’s very serious about the eggs.”
“I am serious about the eggs,” my father agrees.
Twenty-two minutes later, I come down to the kitchen with wet hair and find the coffee already made.
Two mugs on the counter.
Mine black, at my place.
Hers with cream, no sugar, at hers.
Charlie is at the stove in a sweatshirt and yesterday’s shorts, hair pulled back into something that is technically a bun and functionally a knot, holding a spatula in one hand and her phone in the other, reading it at an angle that suggests she is not actually reading it.
My father is leaning against the island with his arms crossed, watching her cook his eggs with the expression of a man who has decided, against all prior evidence, to trust her.
“You’re scrambling them too fast,” he says.
“They’re fine.”
“They’re going to be rubbery.”
“They’re going to be delicious, and you’re going to say thank you.”
“I will say thank you regardless. That is not the same as them being good.”
Charlie points the spatula at him without turning around.
“You’re a nightmare,” she says. “I see where she gets it.”
“I have been told.”
I take my mug and sit down at the island.
Charlie glances over her shoulder at me.
Half a second.
Nothing in it.
Then she goes back to the pan.
“You look like you slept on a sofa.”
“I did sleep on a sofa.”
“Weird. Me too.”
She plates the eggs.
Four plates.
She doesn’t ask who wants any; she just does it, the way she does everything, with the confidence of someone who has never once been told no in a kitchen.
She hands the first plate to my father, who takes it with an expression of profound skepticism and eats a bite anyway.
She slides the second across the island to me without looking.
She keeps the third.
The fourth she leaves on the counter for Cate, who is still upstairs.
I pick up my fork.
The eggs are, in fact, slightly rubbery.
I eat them anyway.
Charlie reaches over and takes a piece of toast off my plate.
I don’t say anything.
There is no point.
There has never been any point.
My father watches this transaction with the mild, unbothered interest of a man watching a nature documentary.
He does not ask.
He does not comment.
He simply eats his eggs and drinks his tea and looks, for all the world, like a man who has been sitting at this island at this hour with these people for years.
Cate comes down in a wrap dress the color of clotted cream, hair blown out, smelling of the gardenia perfume I have already learned to associate with her.
She crosses directly to my father and kisses him on the mouth.
Not a peck.
An actual kiss.
The kind that makes Charlie stare very hard at her plate.
“Jesus, Mom.”
Cate pulls back.
“What?”
“It’s breakfast.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m trying to eat.”
“So eat.”
My father adjusts his glasses.
“I recommend the toast.”
Charlie points at him.
“Do not encourage her.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You absolutely were.”
Cate laughs and circles the island.
On her way past me, she presses a kiss to the top of my head.
I go still.
Only for a second.
She has never done that before.
I don’t know what to do with it.
So I do nothing.
“Eggs,” she says, delighted, apparently unaware she has done anything unusual. “Charlie, did you make these?”
“I did.”
“They’re wonderful.”
“They’re rubbery,” says my father.
“They’re wonderful,” Cate repeats.
She sits down beside him.
Charlie looks at me.
I don’t know if she noticed.
I think she did.
She doesn’t say anything.
I am beginning to understand that Charlie asks a great many questions right up until the moment an answer might actually matter.
Then she stops.
I appreciate this more than I intend to.
And then they start talking.
It is the same conversation they have had every morning for a week, and it is, somehow, never exactly the same.
The florist wants to substitute peonies for garden roses because the garden roses didn’t come in.
The string quartet has a scheduling conflict on Friday and can only play Saturday.
The seating chart has a problem, which is that Cate’s cousin Deborah has not spoken to Cate’s cousin Margaret since a christening in 2019, and they cannot under any circumstances be placed at the same table and also cannot be placed at tables visible to each other, which apparently rules out the entire west side of the ballroom.
“Put Deborah at table four,” my father says. “Put Margaret at table eleven. Table eleven is behind the pillar.”
“There is no pillar.”
“There will be by Saturday.”
Cate laughs and swats his arm.
I drink my coffee.
Charlie eats her toast.
Then, without being asked, she slides the butter dish down the island toward me because I have been looking at it for approximately ten seconds.
I don’t thank her.
She doesn’t expect me to.
“Oh—”
Cate sets down her fork, suddenly bright.
“Two weeks from tomorrow.”
Charlie frowns.
“Two weeks from tomorrow what?”
Cate smiles.
It is the smile she has been wearing since the day she came home with the ring, the one that has not once flickered since.
“The wedding,” she says. “Two weeks from tomorrow, we’re officially a family.”
I look across the island.
I don’t decide to.
Charlie is already looking at me.
Her expression doesn’t change.
Neither does mine.
It lasts perhaps a second.
Then my father reaches for Cate’s hand.
Charlie looks away.
So do I.
He lifts Cate’s hand from the counter and kisses her temple, unhurried, like it’s a thing he does because it’s Tuesday, because the eggs are rubbery, because the sun is coming through the east window and landing on the two of them and neither has moved out of it.
“Officially,” he says. “For the record, I’ve been operating under that assumption for some weeks now.”
“You have not.”
“I have. I put Charlotte’s name on the guest list in August.”
“You put my name on the guest list in August,” Charlie says, “and I didn’t even know I was moving here in August.”
“I know,” my father says. “It was a very confident August.”
Charlie laughs.
A real one, surprised out of her.
My father has been getting those from her more often lately.
She looks at him for a second—this tall, gray-haired man with his reading glasses in his hair—and something in her face softens.
Then she looks back at her plate.
“Okay,” she says. “That was good.”
“I have my moments.”
Cate is watching the two of them with her chin on her hand.
She has the expression of a woman who has spent a great deal of her life being told she was wrong about people and who is currently, quietly, being proven right.
“Two weeks,” she says again, softer. “Can you believe it?”
I look at Cate.
She is forty-eight years old and she is happy.
Not the polished, camera-ready happiness I have seen her wear at charity dinners, but something quieter.
Something that settles into her shoulders and stays.
I haven’t known her long enough to know whether she has ever looked like this before.
But I know my father.
I have never seen him look like this.
Across the island, Charlie has stopped eating.
She is watching Cate too.
Her face has gone still in the way it goes still when something actually matters, and I know—without evidence, without any reason to know—that she is thinking about Vermont.
About a house that was sold.
About the last summer before it was.
Then she reaches over and steals the last piece of toast off my plate.
The stillness disappears.
She is just Charlie again, chewing with her mouth half-open because she knows it bothers me.
“Two weeks,” she says to Cate. “That’s—soon.”
“It is.”
Cate squeezes my father’s hand.
She doesn’t let go.
For a moment, nobody says anything.
Then Cate looks between Charlie and me.
“You know,” she says, “I was so worried you two wouldn’t get along.”
Charlie glances at me.
I look back.
“Yeah,” she says. “That would’ve been awkward.”
Cate smiles.
“Instead, look at you.”
Charlie looks down at the piece of toast she stole from me.
I pick up my coffee.
“I couldn’t have planned it better,” Cate says.
Something about the sentence catches.
Not enough to hurt.
Not enough to name.
Just enough that I hear it twice.
Once when she says it.
Again after the room has moved on.
Charlie clears her throat.
“You say that now. Give me another week.”
“I’m choosing optimism.”
“You’ve met me.”
“I gave birth to you.”
“Exactly.”
My father takes another bite of eggs.
“I remain cautiously optimistic.”
Charlie points her toast at him.
“You’re on thin ice, Ashford.”
“This is my house.”
“Our house,” Cate corrects.
My father looks at her.
There is a beat.
Then he smiles.
“Our house.”
Charlie looks at me again.
I don’t know why.
Maybe because it was the same correction she made days ago.
Maybe because she remembers.
I do.
I look down at my coffee.
Breakfast eventually dissolves the way breakfast does.
My father takes his tea and disappears toward his study.
Cate follows him halfway there before remembering three things she needs to tell the florist and turning around again.
Charlie goes upstairs to change.
I stay in the kitchen.
There are plates on the island.
Toast crumbs.
A pan soaking in the sink.
Four mugs.
No.
Two mugs.
My father took his tea with him.
Cate abandoned hers somewhere else.
Charlie’s coffee mug sits beside mine near the sink.
Cream residue at the bottom of hers.
Black coffee at the bottom of mine.
Two weeks from tomorrow.
I turn on the water.
Wash hers first.
Then mine.
I dry them.
Open the cabinet.
There are twelve nearly identical mugs inside.
I put hers on the shelf.
Then mine.
Beside it.
Two weeks from tomorrow.
I close the cabinet.
I don’t think about why I know which one is hers.