Chapter 11 Caterina #2
When she calls a break, the room loosens.
Men I don’t know pull out phones and pretend they don’t want to be here.
Women I don’t know watch me like I’m both a test and a lesson.
Pru plops onto the front pew and kicks her foot like she wants to kick a person.
Tiernan takes up a spot by the side aisle and answers a text like the phone is lucky to be in his hand.
The entire time, his eyes are locked on Pru.
Aoife checks her list. “We run the recessional once and we’re done,” she announces. “Fifteen minutes if you all pretend to be human.”
“I think the bride might need water,” someone says in a voice like a microphone at a bake sale.
I don’t, but the idea of refusing kindness in a church feels like blasphemy, so I nod.
A younger cousin whose name I don’t know sprints to the sacristy and returns with a paper cup like he’s just done me a favor that makes us family.
Cayce checks the side door and then turns back to me. “We should talk,” he says.
“We are talking.”
“About this,” he says, the thin line of a smile not appearing. “About what it is.”
“The wedding?”
“The marriage,” he corrects. “What it means.”
“I don’t know what it means,” I say, because lying would be pointless and I’m tired of pretending that ignorance is a sin. “I thought I was going to be a nun. That’s the only set of rules I bothered to learn. I didn’t have anything else to imagine.”
He studies my face, not impatient. “What did you picture?”
“Quiet,” I say. “A small room that was mine. People who didn’t expect me to be useful in ways that hurt. A set of hours that made sense.” I swallow. “Finishing my degree.”
“You’ll finish,” he says like a promise, not a concession. “I’ll fund a department if I have to.”
“I don’t need a building with my name on it. Just a piece of paper.”
“I didn’t say your name.” He tilts his head. “I said fund. I know how to get what I want without putting us on a plaque.”
“What do you want?”
He takes a breath that sits low. “You. In my house. Safe. With work that belongs to you and not to me. With a key that works in every lock. With the ability to tell me when I’m wrong and make it count.”
“That’s a lot of words for a man who only seems to say ten per day.”
“I save them for the right ears,” he says.
I glance down the aisle where Nan is pretending not to scrutinize us. “That’s your grandmother?”
“She is.”
“She told me she’ll be at the wedding,” I say, “and that if I want to run, she’ll help me.”
He nods once. “She told me the price for the bands was giving you a door that isn’t mine to control.”
“And you agreed.”
“I did.” His jaw flexes. “And I am not worried.”
“You should be,” I say.
“Am I so awful?” he asks mildly.
“You’re not awful,” I say. “You’re a choice with a life that would be mine. I think we both know I’m terrible at making the right choices.”
He considers that without flinching. “You chose turquoise over black.”
“That was petty.”
“That was choosing,” he says. “You want small or large, Caterina? When you say queen, do you mean the crown and nothing else, or do you mean the work?”
“What is the work?”
“Everything you can see and everything you won’t until it’s on the table,” he says.
“People. Money. Houses. Who sits where. Who speaks when. Who gets paid. Where we give. Which cousin’s son doesn’t go to jail because we called the right man.
Which cousin’s son does because we didn’t.
” His voice stays low and steady. “And inside the house, what happens is our law. If you want small, I can make it small. If you want large, you won’t be bored because you’ll control our empire at my side. ”
I picture large: rooms with people I don’t trust, the way women trade information under the cover of compliments, the way men take cues from where a woman sits and who she greets first. I picture small: a degree finished, a job I pick, a door I can close.
I don’t know which one is safer. I don’t know which one is me.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve never known what I want. I know what I can tolerate. I know what I can survive. I don’t know what I would pick if ‘no one will be mad at you’ was on the table.”
He doesn’t rush to fill the space. “We’ll find out,” he says finally. “Not all at once. But we will.”
“And if I pick wrong?”
“You’ll pick again,” he says. “I’m not marrying you for a posture. I’m marrying you for a life that we will create together. You’ll find your path the way my Nan found hers. The way my mother did too, before she died.”
I look at his mouth because looking at his eyes makes my brain go quiet in a way that isn’t helpful. “You do realize that’s not romantic.”
“I’m not in the romance business,” he says. “I’m in the business of truth and trust where you’re concerned.”
That is so much worse. It is also better. I don’t tell him either.
A crash interrupts us. Pru and Tiernan are at it in the side aisle near the choir loft door. A ladder has tipped and slid the last foot to the floor. No one is hurt, but Pru looks like she’s ready to commit arson on camera and add in murder just for the fun of it.
“I told you your angle is trash,” she says, stabbing a finger toward the lens tucked under the loft rail. “You’ll catch faces coming in, but your back aisle is naked.”
“Naked,” Tiernan repeats, amused like he is testing how the word fits in a church. “We have eyes on the narthex and a man inside the sacristy door. Anyone wanting to come up that aisle at speed is not doing it twice.”
“You don’t want them to do it once,” Pru says. “Put another eye there. And not one of your cheap ones that does great at noon but is useless at dusk.”
“They’re not cheap.”
“I know a guy with better lenses hanging out in the trunk of his car. And he owes me.”
Tiernan raises a brow. “Owes you what?”
“His freedom,” she says. “I didn’t snitch when I could have.”
Tiernan snorts. “That’s not how debt works.”
“It is in my world,” she says sweetly. “And before you point out the legalities, I am aware. I don’t need law on my side. I have leverage and we all know that’s enough.”
“You have an opinion,” Tiernan says. “And a basic understanding of optics.”
“I have enough to know your placement is lazy.” She plants her hands on her hips. “And if you don’t fix it, I will climb up there and do it myself.”
“I would pay to see that,” a cousin whispers behind me.
Tiernan keeps his tone level. “You’re not climbing any ladders, Prudence.”
“Call me that again like you know me,” she says, “and I’ll introduce you to a guy who would gladly get rid of your body just to see me smile.”
The pews go quiet. Tiernan’s mouth thinks about smiling. “Would he, now?”
“He’s romantic like that.”
“Tell him to come to the wedding,” Tiernan says. “We can compare quotes.”
Pru rolls her eyes so hard they might stick. “Move the camera.”
Tiernan taps his earpiece and says something into the air; two men split off and head toward the back aisle like he just had the idea himself. He glances at Pru. “Happy?”
“Temporarily less homicidal,” she says. “Keep trending in that direction, pretty boy.”
Cayce leans toward me slightly. “Your friend is bad for my blood pressure.”
“She’s good for mine,” I say. “We balance each other out.”
“She threatened to have my brother, who is also my lieutenant, disappeared. In a room full of the families.”
“She did,” I say. “He’ll live.”
“Regrettably,” Tiernan calls without turning around.
“Regret nothing, cupcake,” Pru calls back. “It ages you. And your looks are the only thing you’ve got going for you.”
Nan laughs once, sharp and pleased, then schools her face as if she didn’t. I love her a little for it.
Aoife claps for attention and tells us to reset for the recessional. We practice the turn, the pivot to face the aisle, the step off the riser that no one wants me to trip over. I find myself wishing I’d worn a dress, just to make sure I can do it in a skirt.
We do it twice because at the end of the first pass, an uncle in the third pew starts clapping like this is a play and Aoife threatens to revoke his invitation.
When she finally dismisses the room, the noise swells—talk, footsteps, the shuffle of coats. People come up to shake my hand. A woman in her sixties tells me my grandmother would be proud if she’d lived to see this. I don’t know which grandmother she means. I say thank you like I do.
Nan waits at the end of the pew as if she and the wood are old friends. When I reach her, she takes my hand between both of hers and turns it palm-up like she is reading a map.
“Are you frightened?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Be frightened until you’re not. Then be stubborn.”
“I can do stubborn,” I say.
“I suspected,” she says. “You look like a girl who learned too early not to cry in public.”
“I did.”
“You can cry in my kitchen,” she says. “Or on my porch. I keep tissues, and I don’t tell stories that aren’t mine. If you want to run, I’ll help you run. If you want to stand, I’ll stand behind you and glare.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it in my bones. “I might take you up on the glaring.”
“Good,” she says. “It keeps me young.”
She releases my hand and pats my cheek, then turns to watch two men argue about whether the back door should be propped. She enjoys other people’s competence almost as much as she enjoys their mistakes.
Cayce is at my shoulder again. “We’re going to dinner after this,” he says. It is a statement that could be a question if I wanted it to be. “Family table. Short. Then you’re free with Pru.”
“Free,” I repeat.
“You have your bachelorette plans.”
“I don’t,” I say truthfully. “Pru does.”
He nods. “I’m not asking. I’m telling you that security will be close enough to matter and far enough to pretend. You can ignore them. They’ll pretend to ignore you.”
“Generous,” I say.
“Practical,” he says. “You’re getting a night. Take it.”
“What’s the catch?”