Chapter 35 Nora #2
“Consider it a service we provide for new members,” Layla says, raising her glass.
“Should I be scared that I’m being called a new member?” I ask. “Feels like there should be an orientation packet.”
“Your orientation packet is this brunch,” Audrey says. She offers me a quick, sideways smile—the first sign of genuine warmth I’ve detected under her analytic calm. “And probably an embarrassing group chat thread once you pass the background check.”
Miranda leans in. “Wait, they do a background check?”
I shake my head. “Don’t encourage them.”
Miranda just grins, like she’s delighted by every new reveal.
The server comes by to refill our glasses and drop another round of plates—salmon, eggs, and a small mountain of hash browns—and the conversation momentarily pauses so everyone can pretend they’re not about to devour two days’ worth of calories.
I watch the etiquette—how nobody waits, how everyone just eats what looks best, how Audrey grabs the crispiest hash browns without asking, how Jenna takes the liberty of pouring water for Miranda and me without comment. I like it. The lack of performance.
“Moving on,” Serena says. “Tell us everything, Nora. How did it actually start? Because David’s told Caleb approximately nothing, and Caleb’s been going insane trying to piece it together from context clues.”
“They kissed in her kitchen,” Miranda blurts out.
I nearly choke on my mimosa. “Miranda!”
“What? You left out the part where his ex tried to kidnap your student and then he stuck his tongue down your throat.”
“I hadn’t said any of the parts yet.”
She spears a piece of French toast with her fork. “You were going to.”
“Anyway,” I move on, “it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment everything started. We noticed each other back when I started working at the school.”
“It’s difficult not to notice a Kingsley,” Serena says with great authority.
“But it all came to a head after Kelsie showed up unannounced and tried to sign Michaela out. I intercepted it. Michaela was upset. David was stuck in a meeting. I offered to watch her until he was free, and . . .” I shrug. “It kind of just spiraled from there.”
Layla clutches her chest. “Spiraling is how all the best ones start.”
“It’s also how structural failures start,” Jenna observes.
“Jenna.”
“What? I’m offering perspective.”
“Thank you,” I say dryly. “That’s exactly the kind of stabilizing insight I was hoping for.”
Jenna inclines her head as if she’s provided a public service.
Layla points her fork at me. “Ignore her. Continue.”
So I do. I tell them about the increasingly impossible logistics of pretending David and I weren’t, in fact, circling each other like deeply repressed adults in a period drama.
I tell them about Michaela, because it’s impossible to tell the story without her at the center of it.
About school pickup, homework, and Archie’s suspiciously effective role as emotional support mammal.
About how one moment David was just a very intense father in expensive suits and the next he was in my kitchen making me forget entire categories of good judgment.
“That,” Serena says, setting down her glass with a decisive little click, “sounds exactly like David.”
“It does,” Layla agrees dreamily. “Very tortured. Very hot. Excellent work, Nora.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say.
Miranda snorts so hard she nearly inhales powdered sugar. “That’s objectively false. You absolutely did things.”
Audrey tilts her head at me. “How long did you make him suffer?”
“I didn’t make him suffer.”
“Nora,” Serena says. “He’s my boyfriend’s brother. I say this with love and a very strong grasp of the evidence: that man has been suffering in a bespoke emotional prison for months.”
Jenna lifts one shoulder. “Years, probably. But she accelerated the timeline.”
I press my palms to my burning cheeks. “This was a mistake.”
“No,” Layla says cheerfully. “This is brunch.”
“And brunch is court-ordered honesty,” Miranda adds.
“Exactly,” Serena says.
As the conversation continues, it shifts away from me, and I begin to learn things, too.
Serena left Luminous after a corporate espionage scandal that turned out to be an inside job.
Caleb represented her and then fell for her, which makes David’s situation feel slightly less unprecedented.
Layla’s father once publicly humiliated her during the acquisition of their family company, and Bennett stood up for her in front of a boardroom full of executives.
After Audrey returned from Sweden and sorted things out with Logan, his parents were awful to her, and he stood up to them in a confrontation the group still talks about in reverent tones.
“So the pattern is clear,” I say, on my second mimosa and feeling braver. “Every woman at this table got here through a crisis.”
“The crisis is the entry fee,” Serena says. “The brunch is the reward.”
“And the men?” I ask. “They just accept that their partners have a standing appointment to dissect their every move over French toast?”
“They encourage it,” Layla says. “Bennett sends me to brunch the way coaches send athletes to recovery. He thinks it makes me easier to live with.”
“Does it?”
“God, no. It gives me ammunition.”
“Caleb calls brunch ‘the war room,’” Serena adds. “He respects it. He fears it.”
“Logan doesn’t understand any voluntary social gatherings,” Audrey says. “But he supports it wholeheartedly. He once asked me whether we follow an agenda.”
I’m laughing. Genuinely laughing—not the careful, measured laugh I deploy at school functions and board meetings, but the kind that makes your stomach hurt, your eyes water, your sister look at you like she’s seeing a version of you she’s been missing.
Miranda catches my eye across the table, and she gives me a smile filled with a lot of history and the relief that it’s all behind us now. That after everything I gave up and lost over the years, I’m finally finding my way to the one thing I truly want—a family to call my own.
I squeeze her hand under the table. She squeezes back.
“Now,” Layla says, setting down her mimosa. “We need to discuss logistics.”
“Logistics?” I ask.
“The wedding. My wedding. Bennett and Layla. Three months out. You’re coming.”
“I— David—”
“No excuses. You’re coming. Michaela’s flower girl. She’s already submitted her dress preferences. They were detailed.” Layla pulls out her phone and scrolls. “She sent me a three-page brief. With footnotes. And a section titled ‘Acceptable Color Palette With Supporting Rationale.’”
“That sounds about right.”
“But more importantly,” Serena says, leaning forward, “you’re in the group now. Which means you’re in on wedding planning. Which means Saturday brunches, dress fittings, cake tastings, and Layla’s very strong opinions about table settings.”
“My opinions aren’t strong. They’re correct.”
“She cried over a napkin fold last week,” Audrey whispers.
“It was a swan fold, Audrey. A swan. At a wedding. That’s a choice that says something about who you are as a couple, and I won’t apologize for having feelings about it.”
I look around the table. Layla, mid-rant about napkin architecture.
Serena, watching me with quiet approval.
Audrey, pushing her glasses up and smiling.
Jenna, finishing her martini with the air of a woman who’s endured many such rants and emerged stronger.
Miranda, eating her third piece of French toast and looking like she’s found religion.
This is it. The group. The brunch. The binding contract David warned me about.
I’m in.
“So,” Serena says, “on a scale of one to ‘I’m shitting myself,’ how freaked out are you right now?”
I look at her. At all of them. At my sister, who came for moral support and found a home. At the corner booth in a wine bar on Rush Street where four women I barely know have made room for me like the space was always there.
I smile. It comes out a little overwhelmed. A little awed. A lot like a woman who spent four years eating dinner alone and has just been offered a seat at a very loud, very opinionated, very full table.
“Zero,” I say. “I think I just found my people.”