Vivi's POV:

Sunday mornings have a shape I’ve never had to defend.

Six-forty wake. Seven-fifteen on the court.

Nadia calls it my religion, which is only slightly dramatic.

Three years, same reservation, same indoor courts at the club because New England spring weather is a liar. I’ve missed twice—once for a fellowship interview, once for my father’s fiftieth-birthday brunch. The pro at the desk knows my name, my grip, my serve.

He has never once asked me to confirm.

I’m zipping the tennis bag when I hear the kitchen faucet running downstairs.

That’s wrong.

Charlie doesn’t do mornings before eight unless forced, and even then she performs suffering like a one-woman show.

I come down with the bag still on my shoulder.

Charlie is at the island in a dress I recognize—the burgundy one from the fitting schedule, hanging in its garment bag beside her on the counter like a patient waiting for a verdict.

She’s dressed in jeans and a soft gray sweater, hair pulled back in a knot that’s already losing the fight. Her coffee mug sits in front of her, full, untouched, gone cold enough that the surface has that dull skin coffee gets when it’s been sitting too long.

She’s staring at the garment bag the way you stare at a bill you can’t pay.

“Morning,” I say.

“Morning.”

She doesn’t look up.

I set the bag down by the door.

Pour myself coffee.

Black, no sugar.

She made it.

I can tell because she always makes mine first now and leaves it on the warming plate.

I don’t comment on that.

Neither does she.

It’s become one of those things that exists without being named.

“You’re up early,” I say.

“Fitting’s at nine-thirty.”

“I know.”

That gets her eyes up.

Green. Slightly red at the rims, though that could be sleep.

“Right. You know everything.”

“Not everything.”

“Just my schedule.”

“Your mother asked me to keep the calendar straight this week. She has three vendors calling a day.”

I take a sip of coffee.

It’s good.

She’s learned how I like it, which is a small, irritating fact I’ve decided not to examine.

“She was supposed to take you.”

“She was.” Charlie’s thumb finds the handle of her mug and turns it a quarter inch clockwise, then back. “She called at six. There’s a problem with the florist and the ceremony arch. Apparently the arch is ‘structurally concerning.’”

She does the air quotes.

“Whatever that means. She’s driving over there now to look at it herself.”

“So you’re going alone.”

“I’m twenty-one, Vivi. I’m capable of attending a dress fitting by myself.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

“You said it with your face.”

I don’t have a face.

I have a face I’ve been told is unreadable by people who’ve known me for years, and this girl has been living in my house for barely two weeks and reads me like a paperback she’s already dog-eared.

I take another sip of coffee and let her have that one.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Nothing happened.”

“Charlie.”

She looks at the garment bag again.

Then at the coffee she hasn’t touched.

Then at the window over the sink, where the morning is doing that gray-gold thing New England does in late spring, all soft edges and no commitment.

“My dad called last night,” she says.

I wait.

“He’s not coming in as early as he said. There’s a deal closing, or a board thing, or—I don’t know. He’ll be there for the wedding. He said he might miss the rehearsal dinner. Maybe the welcome thing Friday. Depends on the flight.”

She shrugs.

The shrug is the most careful thing I’ve ever seen her do.

“It’s fine. He always comes. Eventually.”

There it is.

Eventually.

Dropped into the sentence like a stone into a well.

She keeps her face perfectly still while it falls.

I check the clock on the wall.

Seven-forty.

I need to leave in ten minutes to make the court.

I take out my phone.

I won’t make it today. Apologies for the late notice.

Send.

Charlie’s head comes up.

“What did you just cancel?”

“Nothing important.”

“Vivi.”

“It’s handled.”

“Was that tennis?”

She’s already straightening away from the island, and her voice has gone up half a register.

“That was tennis. You have a standing Sunday reservation. You’ve had it for—Nadia told me. Three years.”

“Then you know it’s not a problem to miss once.”

“You can’t cancel because of me.”

“I already did.”

“Vivi.”

“You need to be there in forty minutes,” I say. “The atelier is in the city. Traffic on the pike this time of day is unpredictable.”

“I can get myself there.”

“I’m aware.”

She stares at me.

I stare back.

The kitchen clock ticks, and somewhere down the hall the house settles the way old houses do, with a groan in the pipes and a creak in the floor above us.

“That’s not the same thing,” Charlie says finally.

“I know.”

She doesn’t have an answer for that.

She picks up her cold coffee, dumps it into the sink, and rinses the mug without being asked.

Another thing I file away.

Charlie cleans when she’s rattled.

She leaves the mug upside down on the drying rack.

Then she picks up the garment bag and walks toward the mudroom without looking at me.

I follow.

She’s quiet in the car.

Not the good kind of quiet, where she hums under her breath and taps her thumb off-beat against the door panel when a song she likes comes on.

This is the other quiet.

She puts her feet up on the dashboard out of pure muscle memory—two sneakers, laces trailing—and then, halfway down the drive, she takes them down.

Sets them on the floor mat.

Folds her hands in her lap.

I notice.

I don’t say anything.

I keep both hands at nine and three and take the ramp onto the highway and let the silence do what it’s going to do.

She lasts four exits.

“So this is weird, right? You canceling tennis.”

“It’s a reservation.”

“It’s a ritual. Nadia says you once played through a sprained wrist because you didn’t want to give up the court.”

“The wrist was fine.”

“She said you couldn’t hold a fork for a week.”

“I held a fork.”

“You’re proving her point.”

“I’m not proving anything.”

I signal, change lanes, pass a truck hauling lumber.

“You have a fitting. Your mother couldn’t take you. I was available.”

“That’s the version you’re going with.”

“It’s the version that’s true.”

Charlie snorts.

A real snort, not the polite one she does for her mother.

She turns toward the window, and the light catches the freckles across her nose.

“You know what’s funny? You do this thing where you say something completely reasonable and it still sounds like a lie.”

“That’s not a thing I do.”

“It’s a thing you do constantly.”

“Name one time.”

“Tuesday. You said you weren’t hungry and then ate half my fries.”

“You weren’t going to finish them.”

“That’s—”

She pauses.

“Okay, that’s actually true.”

She almost smiles.

Almost.

It gets halfway up and stops, held there by whatever is sitting on her chest.

“I hate that you’re always right.”

“I’m not always right.”

“You’re right enough to be annoying about it.”

I let that stand.

The highway unspools under the tires, and after a minute Charlie reaches over and turns the radio on low.

Some college station playing something with a lot of guitar and no chorus.

She taps her thumb against the door once.

Twice.

Then stops, like she caught herself enjoying something and put it back on the shelf.

I don’t reach over and turn it up.

I want to.

That’s the part I notice.

The wanting.

I file it and keep driving.

The atelier is on the second floor of a converted brownstone, all pale wood and mirrored walls and the particular hush of a place where things cost more than my first car.

A woman named Elise meets us at the door in a black sheath dress and takes Charlie’s garment bag with both hands like it’s a relic.

“Charlotte, lovely to see you. We have the fitting room ready. Your mother sends her apologies, of course.”

“Of course,” Charlie says.

Her voice is smooth and bright and completely false.

I hate it.

I don’t know why I hate it.

I’ve heard her use this voice with her mother’s friends before and it has never bothered me.

Elise looks at me.

“And you’re—?”

“Vivienne Ashford. I’m with her.”

“Wonderful. There’s a settee just outside. We’ll come find you.”

I sit on the settee.

It’s the kind of furniture that looks comfortable and isn’t—low back, hard seat, upholstered in gray linen that would show a single wrinkle for the rest of its natural life.

I take out my phone.

Answer two emails from the investment club.

Decline a meeting.

Then sit with my hands in my lap and listen to the rustle of fabric and the murmur of voices behind the curtain.

Ten minutes.

Fifteen.

The mirror across from me reflects nothing but an empty hallway and a vase of white peonies.

I find myself counting the petals on the closest one.

I stop because that’s not a thing I do.

The curtain moves.

Charlie steps out.

The dress is deep burgundy, matte silk, fitted through the waist and falling in a clean line to just below her knees. It has a high neckline and a low back, and it does the thing good tailoring does, which is make the person wearing it look like the dress was invented for them specifically and everyone else is borrowing it.

Her hair is still in the messy knot.

She hasn’t put on shoes.

There’s a pin in the shoulder Elise is still adjusting.

The dress fits.

This is unfortunate.

I don’t say anything.

I forget, for a second, that saying things is a thing people do.

Charlie’s eyes find mine in the mirror across the hall.

She’s waiting.

I’ve been silent for one second too long.

She notices.

“Well?” she says.

“It needs hemming.”

“Vivi.”

“What?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Elise, oblivious, steps back and tilts her head at the reflection.

“It really is lovely on you, Charlotte. The color is perfect with your skin. You’ll photograph beautifully.”

“She does,” I say.

It’s out before I’ve decided to say it.

Charlie’s head turns.

Elise’s head turns.

I look at the peonies.

“The fit is good,” I add. “The waist sits correctly.”

Charlie’s mouth does something at the corner.

She doesn’t push.

She’s too smart to push in front of a stranger.

She files it away the way I file things, and I recognize the move because it’s mine.

That is its own problem.

Elise has her step back onto the platform and starts pinning the hem.

I sit down again.

The mirror runs the length of the wall.

Charlie is facing it.

I am directly behind her.

For one moment—no longer than a breath—her eyes lift in the glass and find mine.

She knows I’m looking.

I know she knows.

Neither of us does anything about it.

The glass holds us there, the two of us and the dress and the pin in her shoulder.

Then Elise stands between us to check the line of the hem.

The moment folds itself away like a chair.

I look at my phone.

There is no message.

I put it away.

I am irritated with myself in a way I can’t quite locate.

Which is the most irritating kind.

My phone rings while Charlie is changing back.

Cate.

“Vivi, darling, thank God.”

She sounds like she’s walking, heels on marble, the acoustics of a large empty room.

“Is she there? Is it going well? I feel absolutely wretched about missing it.”

“She’s here. It’s going well. The dress is done.”

“Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Listen—while I have you—I need to pick out her earrings for the rehearsal dinner and I’m completely paralyzed. I’ve got three pairs in front of me and cannot decide. There’s a pair of chandeliers, very dramatic, and a pair of drops, and then these little pearl studs that are probably too plain but—”

“Not the chandeliers.”

“No?”

“She’ll touch them. She fidgets with anything heavy on her ears, and then she’ll be distracted all night and blame the earrings.”

I’m looking at the peonies while I say it.

“The drops. Not the studs. She’ll say the studs are boring, and she’ll be right. The drops, but nothing longer than her jaw, or she’ll take them off at dinner and lose one.”

Cate is quiet for a second.

Then she laughs.

Warm and a little delighted.

“You know her taste better than I do right now.”

Behind me, the curtain moves.

Charlie steps out in her jeans and sweater, garment bag over her arm.

She heard the end of it.

I can tell by the way she has gone still, one hand on the strap, eyes on me.

“I drive her to campus every morning,” I say into the phone. “I notice things.”

“Well, I’m grateful. Tell her I love her. I’ll see you both tonight.”

I hang up.

Charlie doesn’t say anything about the earrings.

She doesn’t say anything about any of it.

She just holds the garment bag a little tighter and says:

“Lunch?”

“This feels suspiciously like lunch,” Charlie says twenty minutes later across a small round table at a café two blocks over.

She’s ordered a club sandwich and stolen two of my fries before the plates have even settled.

“That is generally what happens when people eat at noon.”

“You’re paying.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then it’s definitely not a date.”

She says it lightly.

Casually.

She’s watching me over the rim of her water glass while she says it.

Testing.

I keep my expression level.

“It’s lunch. You had a fitting. You’re hungry. I’m hungry.”

“Very clinical.”

“Accurate.”

“Sure.”

She steals another fry.

“So where’s your head at on the seating chart?”

“Done. I sent it to your mother Thursday.”

“Of course you did.”

She chews.

Swallows.

Sets the fry down and doesn’t reach for another.

Which is how I know we have arrived at whatever she actually brought me here to say.

“My dad called last night.”

“You said.”

“I know I said.”

She looks at her sandwich.

Picks at the crust.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you again.”

“Because it’s still bothering you.”

“It’s not bothering me.”

“Charlie.”

She exhales through her nose.

“He’s going to be there. He always shows up. He’s never missed a big thing, actually, in his whole life—that’s the thing. He shows up to everything. He just shows up late. He showed up to my high school graduation after the ceremony. He showed up to my sixteenth birthday after the cake.”

She pauses.

“He always comes. Eventually.”

The word again.

Like a coin she has been flipping for years and stopped expecting to land on heads.

My whole body wants to move.

I can feel it—the familiar itch of a problem I could solve before dessert.

I could have my father’s travel office finding alternate flights before the check arrived.

I could make calls.

Move things.

Fix it.

My whole life has been other people’s decisions.

The whole thing is mine.

I put my fork down.

“Do you want me to do anything?”

Charlie looks up.

Surprised.

I watch her run through the options.

The version where I offer to call someone.

The version where I tell her it will be fine.

The version where I take the problem away from her the way everyone else in her life seems to.

None of those are on the table.

“No,” she says.

“Okay.”

That’s it.

That’s all I say.

I pick up my fork again, eat a fry, and let the moment sit there without touching it.

Charlie watches me for a second longer.

Then she picks up her sandwich and takes a real bite.

Something in her shoulders comes down a quarter inch.

“Thanks,” she says around the bread.

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

I understand anyway.

I don’t say so.

I eat my fries and let her steal the last one.

Neither of us mentions the word date again.

Nadia calls at four.

“You canceled tennis.”

“Yes.”

“Sunday tennis.”

“There is only one kind.”

“The Sunday tennis reservation you have had for three years.”

Her voice is doing the thing where it’s perfectly even and completely incredulous at the same time.

“The one you wouldn’t give up when you had the flu. The one you played through with—”

“The wrist was fine.”

“Charlie had a fitting,” I say. “Cate couldn’t attend. It was time-sensitive.”

“Charlie can get herself there.”

“I know.”

“Charlie can take a car service.”

“I’m aware.”

“She can take the bus, which she has, in fact, taken before, because I have personally seen her get off one near campus carrying enough coffee for three people.”

“I’m aware.”

Nadia pauses.

A specific pause.

Not a thinking pause.

A filing pause.

The pause of a woman rearranging a shelf.

“Oh,” she says.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was going to say you’re changing.”

That lands somewhere I don’t expect.

Not the accusation I was braced for.

Not you like her.

Not you’re in trouble.

Just:

You’re changing.

As if the shape of me has started to move without my permission.

“I’m not changing,” I say. “I canceled one court time.”

“You canceled it for a girl you’ve known barely two weeks.”

“I canceled it for a logistical conflict.”

“Sure.”

She doesn’t argue.

That’s the worst part.

Nadia knows exactly when to stop pushing, and she’s stopping now.

The stopping is worse than any question she could have asked.

“I’ll let you go. Say hi to Charlie for me.”

“I will.”

“Vivi.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

A beat.

“I’m just saying I noticed.”

She hangs up before I can answer.

I sit on the edge of my bed with the phone in my hand and the tennis bag still by the door where I dropped it this morning.

I look at the bag for a while.

I don’t feel anything I’m willing to name.

My father has cleared the furniture in the drawing room.

I walk in at half past seven on my way to the kitchen and find him and Cate in the middle of the floor with the French doors open and a speaker on the sideboard playing something slow and old.

Sinatra, maybe.

One of those standards Cate loves.

He is in shirtsleeves with his reading glasses pushed up into his hair.

She is barefoot in a silk wrap dress, laughing at something he has just said, her head tipped back, one hand on his shoulder.

They are practicing their first dance.

My father cannot dance.

This is a fact I have known since I was six years old and he stepped on my foot at a cousin’s wedding and apologized so gravely that I forgave him immediately.

He is stepping on Cate’s feet now.

Or nearly.

She keeps moving her toes out of the way at the last second, like a woman who has done this before.

Which she has.

Three times over.

“Turn, Alexander. Turn.”

“I’m turning.”

“You’re pivoting. There’s a difference.”

“You’re the one who said—”

“I said turn, not spin me like a top.”

He laughs.

My father, who I have heard laugh out loud perhaps a dozen times in my entire life, laughs.

A real one.

Low and unhurried.

Cate beams at him like she has won something.

I stand in the doorway and feel a thing I don’t quite have a word for.

Not resentment.

Not quite.

Something more like watching a photograph develop.

Charlie appears at my elbow.

I don’t hear her come down.

She’s in the same gray sweater, hair now fully down around her shoulders, holding a glass of water and looking at her mother with an expression I recognize because I’ve worn it.

The specific softness of a person watching someone they love be happy in a way they didn’t expect.

“They’re going to be insufferable at the wedding,” she says.

“They are.”

“Like, full-on insufferable. Crying. Toasts. Your dad’s going to cry. Have you seen him cry?”

“Once. When I got my acceptance letter.”

“Oh.”

Charlie looks at him.

“That’s actually very sweet.”

I don’t answer.

“I’ve never seen my mom cry at a wedding,” she says. “She’s done it four times. She always holds it together until the reception and then loses it during the father-daughter dance, and she doesn’t even have a father. She just cries at other people’s.”

“That sounds like her.”

“It’s very on-brand.”

Cate spots us.

“Girls! Come here.”

“Mom—”

“No, absolutely not. Come here. You both need at least one dance step for the reception, and I refuse to spend the whole night watching you stand against the wall looking judgmental.”

“I don’t look judgmental,” Charlie says.

“You look like you’re writing a review.”

“That’s fair.”

“Vivi, come here. Show her how it’s done.”

I already know how to dance.

I’ve known since I was fourteen and my mother made me take ballroom lessons at the club because Ashfords are expected to hold their own at a gala.

I have never once needed to use them.

I have never once mentioned them to anyone.

I do not intend to start now.

But Cate is already reaching for me, and my father is already stepping back with a look of enormous relief, and there is no graceful exit that doesn’t make me look like an asshole.

So I cross the floor and take Cate’s hand.

She dances the way she does everything.

Generously.

A little too fast.

Humming under her breath.

“You’re very good,” she says.

“I’ve had lessons.”

“Of course you have.”

She spins me once, easily, then looks over my shoulder.

“Charlie, come on. Your turn. Alexander, take her.”

“I don’t—”

“Charlotte.”

Charlie sets down her water with the resignation of a woman being marched to her own execution.

My father takes her hand with a gallantry I can only describe as deeply embarrassing to witness.

Cate releases me.

Steps back.

Then—I don’t see exactly how it happens, except that Cate is the kind of woman who makes things happen without appearing to—Cate is dancing with my father and Charlie is standing in front of me with her hand half-raised and a look on her face that says:

This is your mother’s fault and I want you to know I know.

“We don’t have to,” I say.

“She’s watching.”

“She is.”

“Okay, then.”

Charlie puts her hand on my shoulder.

Warm even through the silk.

I put mine at her waist.

Her other hand finds mine.

My hand settles against the curve of her waist the way it would settle against any dance partner’s.

Automatically.

Without thinking.

Which is the problem.

Because the moment my palm settles there, every other part of my brain shuts off and leaves the two of us standing in the middle of the drawing room with the French doors open and the evening coming in cool from the garden.

I can feel her breathing.

She can feel me noticing.

She looks up at me.

I look down at her.

Neither of us says anything for two full counts of the music.

“You’re counting,” she says.

“That is how dancing works.”

“Normal people feel it.”

“Normal people miss steps.”

She deliberately steps the wrong direction.

I follow without thinking.

Correct her.

My hand tightens at her waist.

Once.

Briefly.

Just enough to steady her before she can trip over her own feet.

She doesn’t trip.

She was never going to.

She wanted to see what I would do.

I did it.

Now her eyes are on me with something in them I can’t read and don’t want to.

“You’re very good at this,” she says.

“I’ve had lessons.”

“Of course you have.”

Cate claps.

“Switch! Alexander, come here. I want to try the turn again.”

My father crosses the floor with the speed of a man being rescued from a sinking ship.

Charlie lets go of my shoulder.

Steps back.

Just like that, it’s over.

Thirty seconds.

Nothing anyone would look twice at.

Cate takes Charlie’s hand.

My father takes mine, awkwardly and apologetically.

We shuffle through one verse of something in three-quarter time while he counts under his breath and steps on my foot twice.

I do not think about my hand at Charlie’s waist.

I do not think about it through the rest of the song.

Or dinner.

Or the two hours I spend in my room afterward answering emails I could answer tomorrow.

Later.

My room.

Lights low.

The tennis bag is still by the door.

I haven’t moved it.

I have walked past it four times tonight and looked at it each time the way you look at an unanswered question.

I have not touched it.

I have not rescheduled the court.

Three years.

Same Sunday reservation.

Same court.

Same time.

Same pro at the desk who knows my serve.

I have missed it twice in three years, both times for things that could not have been moved.

I missed it today for a dress fitting.

I begin constructing the explanation because that is what I do.

I build the case.

Lay out the facts.

Arrive at the conclusion.

Charlie needed transportation.

Cate couldn’t attend.

The fitting was time-sensitive.

The atelier is difficult to reach without a car.

The logistical solution was obvious.

Any reasonable person in my position would have done the same.

Except she told me she could get there herself.

And I said:

I’m aware.

My phone lights on the nightstand.

Charlie.

thanks for today

I look at it for a second before answering.

You’re welcome.

Three dots.

Then:

also the dress looked good

She is fishing.

I know she is fishing.

She knows I know she is fishing.

That is the entire point.

She isn’t trying to hide it.

She is doing it in the open, daring me to take the bait or refuse it.

There is no version of this where I come out looking like I haven’t been paying attention.

I type:

It did.

Send.

Three dots.

the dress or me

I stare at the screen.

I type:

You know what I meant

Delete it.

Don’t do that

Delete.

Both

I delete that one so quickly my thumb slips against the screen.

My thumb hovers over the empty message field.

Finally:

Go to sleep, Charlie.

Send.

Three dots.

coward

I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.

I look at the tennis bag.

I missed tennis for her.

I tell myself it was because she needed a ride.

This would be more convincing if she hadn’t told me she could get there herself.

My phone lights once more, face-down, a small square of light bleeding around the edges against the wood.

I don’t turn it over.

I don’t answer.

I also don’t reschedule the court.