3. Margo #2
They arrange themselves without me. Sebastian at the center, Dorothy at his shoulder, a wall of dark suits fanning out on either side. And there, drifting into place directly behind him, Therese, who does have a role.
Godmother. She christened the ship. She belongs up there in a way I never will, and everyone on this deck can see the difference.
The seafoam gown catches the light as if she’s a piece of the ship herself, and her smile is the studied perfection of a woman who has done a hundred of these and knows the exact angle that flatters her.
I watch her watch my husband. There’s no hunger in it, nothing so clumsy as longing. It’s quieter than that. Patience, certainty. The ease of a woman who already knows how the story ends and isn’t fussed about the timeline.
Therese understood patience.
Dorothy’s words turn over in my head, and my stomach knots.
The Master of Ceremonies takes the microphone, launching into a speech about innovation and legacy and the proud tradition of the Austen name. I tune out most of it, focusing instead on keeping Sandy from getting bored enough to cause a scene.
“Mommy, this is taking foreverrr.”
“I know, baby. It’s almost over.”
“That man talks too much.”
“Shh.”
“But he does. He said ‘maritime eggselenx’ three times already. I counted.”
I bite back a smile. “Keep counting. Let me know the final number.”
Sandy nods solemnly and returns to her task, and I return to mine: standing here, smiling, pretending I don’t notice the way Therese’s hand keeps finding reasons to brush against Sebastian’s arm.
“And now,” the MC announces, his voice swelling with rehearsed emotion, “the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The official christening of this magnificent vessel, performed by our beloved godmother, Miss Therese Walton!”
The crowd applauds. Therese steps forward, accepting a bottle of champagne from an attendant, and for one absurd second I half-believe Sebastian will hand her the ribbon too. The ribbon he’s been clutching for the past ten minutes, the one that symbolizes cutting the ties and setting the ship free.
He doesn’t.
He keeps the ribbon, at least, though his eyes follow Therese as she moves to the railing with the champagne.
“I christen thee…” Therese pauses for dramatic effect, and the cameras click in unison. “May you sail with grace, return with stories, and carry all who board you to adventures they’ll never forget.”
She swings the bottle.
It shatters against the hull in an explosion of foam and glass, and the crowd erupts in cheers. Sebastian cuts the ribbon a beat later, but nobody’s watching him anymore. They’re watching Therese, radiant and triumphant, champagne spray catching the light as if it were diamonds in her hair.
The photographer rushes forward, and Dorothy is already at his shoulder, directing.
“The godmother and Mr. Austen first,” she tells him, warm as anything. “She christened the vessel, it’s only right. Therese, darling, beside Sebastian. Yes… Perfect!”
Therese steps into the space beside my husband as if she’s been standing there her whole life.
His hand settles at the small of her back, the automatic courtesy you’d give anyone you’re posed with, and the cameras flash, and Dorothy watches the two of them frame up with the satisfied expression of a woman whose plan is going exactly as designed.
I watch it happen from five feet away, my daughter’s hand in mine.
For half a second Sebastian starts to turn, almost as if he might remember we exist or he might come find us in the crowd. Then the reporters close over him, a wall of raised recorders and shouted names, and he’s gone, folded into the noise.
He doesn’t push back through it, he never does.
Every time the crowd swallows him, he lets it, and he never fights hard enough to come looking for the two people standing at the edge, waiting.
“Mommy?” Sandy tugs my hand, her voice climbing over the brass band and the applause. “Can we go home now? I don’t like it here.”
“Soon, baby.”
“Why doesn’t Daddy play with us? He’s always talking to the grown-ups.” Her lower lip pushes out, and she rubs at her eyes with a fist. “The lights hurt… And it’s too loud. I want it to be just us. You and Sandy and Daddy…”
“I know. Me too.”
“I don’t like the green lady.” She says it quietly, like a secret she’s been holding. “Grandma likes her more than me. And Daddy likes talking to her more than he likes us.”
My throat closes around nothing.
She’s too young and she shouldn’t be able to see it this clearly. She shouldn’t be standing on a two-billion-dollar deck rubbing tired eyes and doing the exact math I do every single day, adding up all the ways her father is somewhere else.
But she is.
And there’s no version of “Daddy’s just busy” that fixes what she’s already worked out on her own.
“Daddy loves you more than anything in the whole world,” I tell her, and that part, at least, I know is true. “He’s just got a very big, very boring job today. That’s all.”
She doesn’t look like she believes me, already too smart for her own good.
“Come on.” I straighten and take her hand instead, done with this deck, done with the cameras and the lights that hurt my daughter’s eyes. “Let’s go find the cake.”
I steer her away from the platform, away from the cameras, away from my husband and his hand on another woman’s back.
A few reporters try to catch my attention, but I’ve perfected the art of the pleasant non-acknowledgment, smile, keep walking, pretend you don’t hear the questions.
“Mrs. Austen, any comment on Miss Walton’s role in today’s ceremony?”“Mrs. Austen, are the rumors of tension in the Austen family accurate?”“Mrs. Austen, can you tell us…”
I keep walking.
Somehow I get us through the rest of it.
There’s cake, which fixes Sandy’s whole outlook on the day, and a corner of the deck away from the worst of the noise where she can eat it.
There’s the slow crawl of afternoon into evening, the speeches winding down, the guests thinning, the great ship finally easing away from the harbor to begin the voyage everyone paid so much to be part of.
I smile at the people I’m supposed to smile at, I answer the questions I can’t avoid with as few words as possible. I keep one hand on my daughter the entire time.
And I don’t look for Sebastian once.
There’s a strange kind of peace in giving up on a thing, in finally setting down a weight you’ve been hauling up a hill for years. I stop expecting him to appear, and the evening gets easier the second I do.
By the time we make it back to the cabin, the ship is well out to sea and the sky has gone the deep blue of nowhere.
Sandy is asleep before I finish pulling the pins from her hair, sugar-crashed and boneless, cake still smudged at the corner of her mouth. I tuck her in, and then I go through the ritual of putting myself away.
The pins come out of my own hair one by one until it falls loose down my back. I slip out of the gown, the beautiful, armored thing I wore, and it lands over a chair, half inside out. I pull on the silk robe hanging by the bed and knot it loose at my waist, too drained to bother with anything more.
The cabin is so silent I can hear the sea moving against the hull.
I’m still standing there when the door opens.
Sebastian comes in slower than usual, and there’s a looseness to him that tells me he’s had more than a few glasses of whatever they were pouring.
He drags his jacket off one shoulder, then the other, and works his tie loose without looking up, exhaustion in every line of him, the day finally catching up all at once.
He sees me and stops.
“Margo.” My name comes out carefully, testing the temperature of the room. “You’re still up.”
I stare at him and my expression doesn’t move.
And then I say the thing I’ve been holding since the platform, because I’m done waiting for him to bring it up, done letting him decide which parts of today we’re allowed to discuss.
“I didn’t like what Sandy said earlier.”
He goes still, tie half-undone in his hand. He knows exactly which part I mean.
“Your mother told a four-year-old she needs to be prettier. More presentable. And I watched you hear it, Sebastian. Yet you didn’t do anything as usual.”
He opens his mouth. I don’t let him have it yet.
“Did you know your daughter spent half the night looking for you?” My voice stays quiet, which costs me. “Every time the crowd moved, she was searching for your face in it. Every time someone new pulled you away, she watched you go.”
“Margo, I was…”
“I know. You were busy. You’re always busy.
” I don’t look away. “I’ve made my peace with waiting for you.
I gave that up somewhere around year three.
But Sandy hasn’t. She still lights up when you walk into a room.
She still thinks if she’s good enough, you’ll finally stay.
So give her that. Give her one night, one real one, before she learns to stop hoping too. ”
Sebastian sets his jacket over the chair, slow, buying himself a second. “You think I don’t see it? I do. I heard what she said, and I hated it.”
“You had a whole expression about it and everything,” I say. “And then you smiled for the cameras.”
“Because there were a few hundred people and a press pool ten feet away.” He rubs a hand down his face.
“What did you want me to do, Margo, start a scene with my mother on the christening platform? You know how she is. You know that once she starts she doesn’t stop, and she would have been thrilled to do it right there, in front of every camera on that dock. ”
“So what? You were being polite?”
“I was managing it.”
“Oh, right.” I laugh, and there’s no humor anywhere in it.
“I would’ve believed you but this is just how it’s always been.
You always have a reason. A launch, a press pool, an investor, your mother’s feelings…
So many careful reasons, Sebastian, and every single one of them comes before your wife and your kid. Do you ever hear yourself?”