2. Margo #3
Sebastian laughs. Not the polite one he uses at these things, the real one, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes, and a crack runs straight through my chest.
“I remember you screaming at me for an hour afterward.”
“I was right to scream. You had no idea what you were doing.”
“No. I knew exactly what I was doing.”
“You were showing off.”
“Maybe.” His face softens when he looks at her, goes younger, as if she’s handed him back a version of himself from before the company swallowed him whole. “Maybe I was.”
And there it is.
The two of them wrapped in a memory I wasn’t there for, trading a history I’ll never be part of, while I stand right here holding a champagne glass I don’t want, close enough to touch him and somehow miles away.
I could say a word. Insert myself, ask a question, remind them both I exist. But I’ve learned what happens when I reach for the thread of these conversations, they go quiet and polite and wait for me to finish so they can pick back up where they were.
So I don’t. I just watch my husband glow at another woman and feel myself fade at the edges, one anecdote at a time.
Sandy leans into my leg, bored, and I put my hand on her hair, holding onto the one person on this ship who actually wants me here.
“Sebastian.” Dorothy reappears, timing her entrance for maximum effect the way she always does. “The photographer is ready for the official portraits.”
Her gaze glides over Therese with open approval. “Therese, darling, you look absolutely divine. That color was made for you.”
“You’re too kind, Dorothy.”
“Come, come. Let’s not keep everyone waiting.”
Dorothy shepherds Sebastian and Therese toward the far end of the room, where a photographer has set up in front of a backdrop featuring the ship’s name in elegant script. I follow because I don’t know what else to do, Sandy’s small hand clutched in mine.
The photographer arranges them with practiced efficiency. Sebastian in the center, Dorothy on one side, Therese on the other. The holy trinity of Austen excellence, posed and perfect.
“Wonderful.” The photographer adjusts his lens. “Now let’s get one with the whole family.”
Finally. My heart lifts, just slightly.
I step forward with Sandy’s hand in mine, ready to take the spot beside my husband that should have been mine from the start.
But there are people everywhere, investors and board members drifting into the frame to be near the Austens, and the crowd folds around me without meaning to, and by the time I find a gap, the photographer is already gesturing me back.
“If we could just… yes, a little to the side. The light’s catching wrong. Perfect.”
A little to the side. So I take Sandy and I move to the side a little, and then a little more, until we’re standing at the edge of the whole thing, outside the frame, watching.
Dorothy leans in and murmurs low to Sebastian, and whatever it is, it isn’t for me. Then she turns to Therese with an expression I have never once seen her aim in my direction.
Real warmth. Actual affection.
“You photograph so well beside him.” She says it just loud enough to carry. “You always have.”
I’m not sure if Sebastian heard her. He’s ringed by men in tuxedos, half-shaking hands while he poses, nodding at a thing one of them is saying into his ear, and the compliment sails right past him and lands on me instead, where it was always meant to land.
That’s when I feel the eyes.
I glance around, and it seems as if the whole room is watching me, the wife parked at the margins of her own family portrait, and I could swear the murmuring behind every raised glass is about me.
The soft laughter near the bar, the gazes that skim over and slide away. I can’t prove a single bit of it. Maybe none of them are thinking about me at all. But that’s the thing nobody tells you about being the outsider in a room like this, it doesn’t matter what’s true.
It only matters how it feels.
And right now, it feels as if every person here has known the ending of my marriage longer than I have.
God, I feel pathetic.
The flashes start. Bright, rhythmic, relentless.
I hold my chin level and my face pleasant, because there are cameras in this room and a lifetime of Dorothy’s lessons drilled into my spine. I will not be the photograph anyone whispers about tomorrow even if it costs me more than anyone will ever see.
My eyes sting and I blink it back and I keep smiling at the edge of a picture I’m not in.
Then the shutters slow. The men peel away toward the bar and the next handshake, the cluster loosens, and across the thinning crowd, Sebastian’s head finally turns.
He finds me. Our eyes lock over the shoulders of the people still drifting off.
His brow creases. “Why are you all the way over there?”
He crosses to me, and past him I catch it, Therese with a small smirk curling at her mouth, Dorothy beside her with one brow arched, the two of them watching the show they built.
Sebastian glances back at the photographer, oblivious as ever. “Wait. Let’s take another…”
“I need some air.” The words come out before he can finish, quiet and even, because if I say more than that the even part goes. “I’m going to the powder room.”
He blinks, genuinely confused that it pisses me off. “Margo, we’re in the middle of…”
“I know. I’ll only be a minute.”
“Daddy, up.” Sandy lifts both arms to him, oblivious to all of it, and he bends on instinct and scoops her onto his hip, and for half a second his face is unguarded, a man holding his daughter and watching his wife walk away without understanding why.
I don’t wait to see if he means it. I’m already moving, across the marble, past the display and the flowers and the beautiful people, holding myself together with both hands until I can get behind a door and finally, finally let go.
The bathroom is as obscene as everything else on this ship, marble countertops, gold fixtures, enough fresh flowers to supply a funeral home. I stand at the sink and stare at my reflection, trying to recognize the woman looking back at me.
Five years ago, I was Margo Delancy.
Just a girl from a fishing village who waitressed her way through community college, who met a beautiful stranger the summer he drifted through town, and who never expected to see him again until we crossed paths years later in the city, where he finally worked up the nerve to ask me to dinner.
Now I’m Margo Delancy-Austen.
A hyphenated afterthought. A wife who isn’t in the family portrait, who learns about her husband’s almost-fiancée from printed itineraries, who gets edited out of photographs while her mother-in-law beams at the woman who was supposed to be in her place.
I fix my lipstick even though it doesn’t need fixing. I adjust my hair even though nothing is out of place. I do these things because they give my hands a task besides shaking.
Calm down. Do not overreact. Maintain your poise and just get through the night, Margo.
It takes a lot to keep telling and convincing myself that.
Then the door opens, and I hear voices in the anteroom, the small sitting area between the main bathroom and the hallway.
Dorothy’s voice, immediately recognizable.
“…such a relief to have her here. I’ve been saying for years that Sebastian needed someone who understands our world.”
“She does seem lovely.” Another voice, one I don’t recognize. “And the investment her family is bringing…”
“Substantial. Charles Walton has been incredibly generous. And Therese herself is everything I could have hoped for in a daughter-in-law.”
I freeze, my hand still raised to my hair.
“But Sebastian is already married,” the other voice says, with a delicacy that suggests she knows exactly what she’s asking.
Dorothy sighs, the long-suffering sigh of a woman who has been burdened by circumstance.
“Yes, well. These things have a way of resolving themselves, don’t they? I’ve always thought Sebastian’s little seaside experiment would run its course. A boy sows his wild oats, makes an impulsive decision, and eventually he comes to his senses.”
“You don’t think the marriage will last?”
“My dear.” Dorothy’s voice drops to a conspiratorial hush.
“The girl is from a small, tacky village. Her father mends nets for a living. She has no proper education to speak of, no connections, no understanding of what it means to be an Austen. Sebastian was charmed by her… simplicity, shall we say. But charm fades. And when it does, he’ll realize what he threw away. ”
“And Therese will be waiting, huh?”
“Therese has always understood patience. It’s one of her many virtues.”
The door opens and closes and the voices fade into the hallway.
I stand in the bathroom, alone, my lipstick still clutched in my trembling hand, and I feel every word settle into my bones as a poison I’ve been swallowing for five years without realizing it.
Sebastian’s little seaside experiment.
That’s what I am. That’s what I’ve always been, to her. Not a wife, not a mother. Not a person worth including in a family portrait.
An experiment.
One that Dorothy has been waiting, patiently, confidently, for years, to see fail.
I put down the lipstick, smooth my dress, and look at myself one more time in the mirror.
The woman looking back at me is tired. She’s been tired for a very long time.
But underneath the exhaustion, a different feeling is waking up.
Harder. Fiercer. A feeling that looks a lot like the girl who used to know exactly who she was, before she traded herself away for a man who doesn’t even notice when she disappears.
So I walk out of the bathroom, through the anteroom where Dorothy stood moments ago, and back into the glittering chaos of the dinner.
I need to find my daughter.
And then I need to decide what I’m going to do about the fact that my entire marriage has been a countdown clock, and I’m the only one who didn’t know it was running.