1. Margo #2
This is supposed to be our family voyage.
That’s what Sebastian called it when he convinced me to come aboard the flagship before her public debut.
“Quality time,” he said, which is a phrase my husband uses the way other people use “I’ll call you back,” technically not a lie, but functionally meaningless.
I’ve had maybe forty minutes of him since we boarded, and half of that was this morning. I’m half-convinced I dreamed it, that no husband of mine actually stayed in bed past sunrise two days into the most important launch of his life.
It’s a glitch in the system. One that won’t be repeating.
“Can I go to play? Kid’s room!” Sandy is bouncing now, the restlessness of a child who’s been cooped up in a suite that’s bigger than most apartments but still, somehow, a cage. “Daddy said there’s a waterslide…”
The kids’ deck. Right. I’d forgotten that existed, probably because I’ve barely been allowed to explore this ship without a handler.
Every time I try to walk somewhere alone, a crew member appears as if they’ve been summoned by witchcraft, offering to escort me, which is a polite way of saying please don’t touch anything, Mrs. Austen, you might break it with your commoner hands.
“Sure, baby. Let’s go find the waterslide.”
I grab my bag, a Hermès that was a gift from Sebastian, which means it was actually purchased by his assistant and delivered to our house with a card I’m fairly certain he didn’t write, and take Sandy’s hand.
The corridor outside our suite is the kind of quiet that costs money.
No screaming children, no drunk passengers, no evidence that this ship will eventually hold thousands of people who paid a small fortune to be here.
Right now, it’s just crew and family and investors, a soft launch before the real chaos begins.
Sandy skips beside me, narrating everything she sees.
“Look, look! A jellyfish… and the carpet is so squishy! Why do all the walls have flowers on them? Can Sandy touch the painting? Just a little bit?”
“Please don’t touch the painting.”
“But what if it’s lonely?”
This is the thing about children. They have an argument for everything, and the arguments are always unhinged, and somehow you find yourself standing in a hallway on a superyacht genuinely considering whether a nineteenth-century maritime landscape might have emotional needs.
“The painting is fine,” I tell her. “It has lots of friends. See? There’s another painting right there.”
She considers this. “Okay. But I’m gonna wave at it!”
Sandy waves solemnly at the painting. The painting, being a painting, does not wave back.
We find the kids’ deck on level seven, a sprawling wonderland of waterslides and splash pads and one of those climbing structures that looks as if it was designed by someone who has never met an actual child. Sandy’s entire body vibrates with anticipation.
“Mommy, look…”
“Mrs. Austen.”
A crew member materializes from nowhere, and I really need to figure out how they do that, looking nervous in a way that immediately puts me on edge. He’s young, early twenties maybe, with the kind of eager-to-please energy that suggests he’s new and terrified of doing anything wrong.
“I’m so sorry, but this deck is currently reserved for a private event.”
Sandy’s face crumples. I feel mine do the same, though I’ve learned to hide it better.
“Reserved?” I keep my voice pleasant, because none of this is his fault. “I wasn’t aware. What kind of event?”
He shifts his weight. “Mrs. Dorothy Austen is hosting a luncheon for some of the early investors. The entire deck is closed until four o’clock.”
Of course it is.
Of course my mother-in-law has commandeered the children’s deck, the one space on this entire floating palace that was supposed to be for kids, so she can schmooze people who already have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes.
“Right.” I smile, and it feels as though I’m wearing a mask that doesn’t quite fit. “Well… We’ll come back later then.”
“Mommy…”
“Later, baby. I promise.”
Sandy’s lower lip trembles in that way that precedes either tears or a tantrum, and I’m honestly not sure which would be worse right now.
I scoop her up before either can fully manifest, settling her on my hip even though she’s technically too big for this and my lower back is going to remind me of that fact later.
“How about ice cream instead?” I murmur against her hair. “I bet there’s ice cream somewhere on this boat.”
“Ship,” she corrects, because Sebastian has been very particular about that. “Daddy says it’s a ship, not a boat.”
“Daddy can call it whatever he wants. I’m calling it a boat.”
She giggles, and the tantrum threat recedes as I carry her back toward our suite because I honestly don’t know where else to go.
This is my life now.
Five years of marriage to Sebastian Austen, and I still don’t know where I’m allowed to exist on his family’s ship.
I smile at the right people and wear the right clothes and I’ve learned which fork to use for salad versus fish versus whatever obscure course the chef has invented this week, and none of it matters.
Because I am a guest in my own marriage.
A placeholder. The woman Sebastian chose instead of whoever he was supposed to choose, and everyone is still waiting for him to realize his mistake.
We’re halfway back to the suite when Sandy falls asleep on my shoulder, the way kids do, suddenly and completely, as if someone flipped a switch. I slow my pace so I don’t jostle her awake.
The suite door is shut tight when I reach it, exactly how I left it. But there’s a change at my feet.
A folded piece of paper has been slid underneath, half of it still poking out into the corridor. Cream-colored, expensive stock with the Austen crest embossed in gold on the front.
I settle Sandy on the sofa, tucking a cashmere throw around her sleeping form, then pick it up.
It’s an itinerary.
Tomorrow’s christening ceremony, laid out in precise detail. The blessing, the champagne toast, the ribbon cutting, the official photographs.
And there, printed in elegant script under the heading Ceremonial Roles:
Godmother of the Vessel: Ms. Therese Walton
I read it again.
Then a third time, because maybe I’m hallucinating, maybe the exhaustion has finally caught up with me and I’m seeing words that aren’t actually there.
Therese Walton.
I’ve never heard that name in my life. Five years of marriage, five years of company dinners and charity galas and family holidays I was barely tolerated at, and no one has ever mentioned a Therese Walton.
But she’s important enough to be the godmother of a two-billion-dollar ship.
I sink into the nearest chair, the itinerary still clutched in my hand, and try to convince myself this doesn’t mean anything.
Maybe she’s a business partner or a major investor. Someone whose name I should have recognized but didn’t because I’ve never been allowed into the rooms where the real decisions get made.
Except Godmother is ceremonial.
It’s tradition. It’s the person who blesses the ship and breaks the champagne bottle against the hull while everyone applauds.
When Sebastian first told me about the christening, he made it sound as if it’s a family affair. His mother would say a few words, some dignitary would cut the ribbon, and the whole thing would be over in an hour.
And now there’s a woman I’ve never met standing in the place where a wife should stand.
I don’t know what she looks like, but my brain builds her anyway. Tall, probably. The kind of woman who was raised in rooms like these, who knows which fork to use without a cheat sheet and never once had to Google what a christening godmother actually does.
Probably old money in her posture. A name that has meaning to the people whose approval I’ve spent five years failing to earn. A woman who fits Sebastian’s world the way I never have, because she was made for it and I was smuggled into it.
I press my hand flat against my sternum, as if I can hold the ache in place before it spreads.
This is stupid. I’m just tired and I’m inventing a rival out of a name on a piece of paper.
But knowing it’s stupid doesn’t make my chest loosen, and it doesn’t answer the only question that matters. If Therese Walton is nothing, then why is her name printed here in gold, taking space I’m not even allowed to occupy?
And he never mentioned anyone named Therese.
The suite door opens.
Sebastian walks in with the easy stride of a man who owns the place, which technically he does, phone pressed to his ear and a smile on his face, though not the one from this morning. This is the boardroom one, the one that never quite reaches me anymore.
He’s in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than a car, his dark hair just slightly disheveled in a way that used to make my heart stutter, and he’s so focused on whoever he’s talking to that he doesn’t even see me at first.
“…absolutely. The Waltons confirmed their investment this morning, so we’re fully funded for the second vessel. I’ll have the contracts drawn up by…”
He stops.
The smile falters when he finally notices me sitting there, and I watch his expression cycle through several emotions in rapid succession: surprise, then what might be guilt, before the careful blankness he wears when he’s about to manage me.
“I’ll call you back.” He ends the call without waiting for a response. “Margo. I didn’t expect you to be here. I thought you’d be at the…”
“The kids’ deck?” I finish. “The one your mother has reserved for a private luncheon?”
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “I wasn’t aware she’d done that.”
“Of course you weren’t.”
I don’t know why I say it. Or rather, I do.
Because I’m tired, and lonely, and I’ve spent two days on this ship feeling like a ghost in my own life, but the words come out more cutting than I intended, and Sebastian’s expression shifts into a guarded one.
“Margo, whatever this is about…”