Chapter 24 A Rehearsed Routine
A Rehearsed Routine
Theo
The gala was three weeks out, the first week of January circled in red on every calendar Theo owned, and she had more or less claimed the third-floor meeting room as her personal command center.
Twelve chairs were shoved against the wall, the massive folding table colonized entirely.
She needed space to work in peace without Josiah sticking his head in every hour with suggestions about balloon arrangements.
No, she didn't want one. Yes, she was sure.
And if he mentioned the balloon arch one more time, she was going to seat him next to Sandra at the gala and consider the matter closed.
By Thursday, the table looked like the aftermath of a bureaucratic explosion.
Seating charts at one end, three folders of donor correspondence stacked nearby in increasingly frantic handwriting, a venue map so heavily marked up she'd forgotten what half the colors meant.
Catering confirmations overlapping with equipment lists overlapping with three versions of the program.
A coffee mug at each end, establishing territorial rights.
She'd arrived at seven-thirty, telling herself it was just to get ahead. That the gala wouldn't plan itself. That she preferred quiet mornings. All of which was true. None of which was the whole truth.
She heard her heels before she saw her. That click on the corridor floor, slow and steady, the kind of footsteps that belonged to someone who had never needed to rush to feel in control of a room. Theo had approximately four seconds to decide what to do with her face.
"Good morning," Catherine said from the doorway.
Theo looked up and smiled helplessly, before she'd even registered doing it. So much for playing it cool.
"Hey. Come in, if you can find somewhere to sit."
She heard Catherine set her bag down, the dull thud of leather against wood.
A silence followed, the kind Theo had learned to recognize as Catherine looking at something and forming an opinion about it.
She kept her eyes on her papers and braced for commentary on the coffee rings on the table, the three empty takeout containers, or the general chaos of it all.
None came.
Instead, Catherine walked to the far end of the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
"Where do you need me?" Catherine asked.
Well. That was new.
Theo had a perfectly good response ready for the comment that hadn't arrived. She set it down, slightly wrong-footed, and slid the seating chart across the table instead. Apparently, Catherine Matthews had decided today was the day to be gracious about mess, and Theo wasn't going to question it.
"We have a hundred and fifty confirmed attendees.
Donors, VIPs, a handful of city officials we're hoping to convert into long-term supporters.
" She tapped the floor plan. "But the seating is a nightmare.
Everyone needs to feel like they've been personally placed, not just assigned a chair, which sounds straightforward until you factor in that half this room has strong feelings about the other half and absolutely none of them have mentioned it on their RSVP.
" She paused. "There's also one specific situation that is actively ruining my week.”
Catherine pulled the chart toward her and uncapped a pen. “Which one?”
“Table seven. They’ve been feuding since 2019, but nobody actually knows why.”
Catherine scanned the page. "Ah. The Durhams and the Crawfords. Timeshare litigation. Big Hamptons property. Something to do with a leap year weekend."
Theo stared at her. "You’re kidding. How do you know that?"
"Samantha Durham's cousin is best friends with my hairdresser’s sister." Catherine was already making notes. "I know a lot of things about these kinds of people. I can handle the seating."
"I was going to ease you in with something simpler first."
Catherine looked up, and the smile she gave her was genuinely reassuring in a way Theo was grateful for. "No need. Let me take this off your plate."
There was something in the way she said it, easy and certain, like it was never in question. Theo sat back. "Okay."
"Good." Catherine returned to the chart. "What else?"
So Theo told her. And then there was more, and she told her that too. Somewhere around the third item on the list, she realized they were just working. The two of them. The way they always had.
It took her a second to recognize the feeling—the rhythm of it, the easy back and forth, the shape of something familiar settling into place. Like pulling on a jacket she’d forgotten she owned and finding it still fit.
That was the part she hadn’t anticipated. The ease.
Theo found herself watching her despite her best efforts not to. The way Catherine’s pen hovered before committing to a change. The faint crease between her brows when she concentrated. The way she tucked her hair behind her right ear, but never the left.
She’d forgotten she knew that. Or tried to, which turned out not to be the same thing at all.
And then there was the familiar curve where Catherine’s neck met her shoulder.
Theo looked back down at her papers. Some memories should have the decency to blur around the edges. Even just a little. Hers, apparently, had other plans.
By eleven a.m., the seating chart was resolved.
The timeshare feud of 2019 had been neutralized by the strategic placement of a large balloon centerpiece between the two families, which would act as a physical barrier significant enough to prevent eye contact without being obvious enough to cause a scene.
It was, Theo had to admit, the correct solution.
It was also going to require her to walk into Josiah's office and tell him he was getting his goddamn balloon arrangement, and she was going to have to do it without making eye contact, because if she saw his face when she said it, she was going to lose the will to live.
She pushed the seating chart aside and moved on before the thought could take hold.
"While we're ticking things off," she said, "I handled the performers' hotel this morning.
Confirmed rooms, late checkout, the works.
" She turned her laptop toward Catherine and queued up a clip.
"We’ve got this jazz quartet out of Harlem.
They take requests from the room and arrange them on the spot.
Josiah saw them last spring and hasn't stopped talking about it since. " She hit play. "Have a look."
Catherine leaned in to watch, close enough that Theo was aware of the shift in air between them. The music filled the room, easy, with a quiet swing, the kind of sound that moved around you rather than at you.
When it ended, Catherine didn’t speak. She kept her eyes on the darkened screen for a moment, as if the last note were still hanging there.
Then she reached over and pressed play again.
Theo watched her listen a second time, the stillness that settled over her when music had her full attention.
When the clip ended again, Catherine sat back slowly. "They're the perfect choice," she said. "You open with them and no one will need convincing to stay." She paused. "That kind of warmth isn't something you can manufacture. You found something real."
Theo held her gaze for a second, something loosening in her chest. She closed the laptop before the feeling could settle too deeply.
By midday, the coffee machine down the hall began to feel less optional. They stood in the small kitchen at the end of the corridor while it whirred and hissed, the building around them still in that strange daytime hush before the evening rush began.
Theo was halfway through mentally recalculating the audio equipment list when Catherine spoke.
“Where is it?” she asked.
"Hmm?"
“The venue. I assumed it would be here, in the main hall, but the floor plan—" She nodded back toward the meeting room. "That's not this building."
Theo poured her coffee. She was aware, with a specificity she resented, of the warmth moving up the back of her neck.
"It's not here, no," she said.
Catherine leaned against the counter and waited, eyebrow lifted in a way that made clear she had all the time in the world.
Theo considered her options. There weren't any.
“It’s at Saint Ann and the Holy Trinity Church,” she said.
Catherine was watching her with an expression she wasn't quite managing to compose. Her fingers tightened around her coffee cup. Just enough to notice. Her gaze dropped, then lifted again, steady but not untouched.
“Oh,” she said, and it wasn’t neutral, no matter how much she’d tried to make it.
Theo felt it too, that quick, shared rush of memory. The height of the arches. Beethoven in the dark. Holding hands in the pew. Harry on the sidewalk afterward.
“It’s not the obvious pick,” Theo said, after a moment. “But it makes sense. Harry's the reason I'm here. The reason I do this work." She wrapped both hands around her mug. "It just holds something special for me. The whole night felt significant, even then. Even now—" She stopped.
She didn't say the rest of it. That she'd scrolled past the listing three times before clicking on it. That she’d left the tab open for a week, turning it over, asking herself whether she was choosing it for the right reasons or whether it was something else.
That in the end, she'd booked it because the evening had mattered.
Because Harry had deserved to be remembered somewhere beautiful, somewhere with good acoustics and high ceilings and light that fell the right way.
Because sitting in that pew beside Catherine had mattered too.
"Can I ask you something?" Theo said.
Catherine looked up from her coffee and nodded slowly, like she was stalling to give herself time to formulate any number of responses.
"Why did you keep seeing Harry? At the Marriott. Jonathan said you were having dinner with him until he died."