Chapter 24 A Rehearsed Routine #2
Catherine was quiet for a moment. Not evasive, just careful, the way she was when she was deciding how much of the truth to give and in what order.
"He told Jonathan he wanted to check out.
He said he'd been there two weeks and didn't want to take advantage.
" She turned her cup slowly in her hands.
"I went down to talk him out of it. He was stubborn about it, so I suggested dinner, just to discuss some options.
And then." She paused. “Well, you knew him.
He was funny and charming and completely impossible to spend an hour with and not want to see again. "
"Yeah,” Theo said softly. “He was all of those things."
"There was another reason." She said it to her coffee first, then looked up.
"After the hospital, when we weren't talking, he was—" She stopped and tried again.
"He talked about you, the way people talk about someone who matters to them.
" Her voice was even, but something underneath it wasn't quite.
"I kept going back because it was the closest thing I could have. "
Theo sat with that for a moment, with what Catherine had just given her, and didn't say anything because there wasn't anything adequate to say.
Instead, she decided to give something back.
"He was clean when he died," she said. "Blood alcohol zero. No substances. Which for Harry was…” She shook her head.
"I think a large part of that was down to you. "
Catherine set her mug aside. "No. It was you.
He told me he was afraid that if he failed again, he'd let you down.
That you were the reason he was trying." She looked at Theo directly.
"I just told him what I knew to be true.
That all you ever wanted was for him to get better.
Hearing it from someone outside of everything, I think it helped it land differently. "
Theo looked at her, at the steadiness in her face and the vulnerability she was letting show underneath it, "Thank you," she said. "For being with him at the end, and for telling me that."
Catherine nodded once, looked back down at her coffee, and they stood for a moment against the counter, Harry present between them in the quiet way he sometimes was, not as grief anymore but as something gentler. As someone who had mattered, and still did.
Eventually, they went back to the meeting room.
Theo went back to the audio equipment list. She made it through approximately four line items before she became aware that the warmth at the back of her neck hadn’t gone anywhere.
That was the thing she was discovering about today, about Catherine sitting four feet away with her pale blue notebook and her specific correct opinions and the expression she'd been wearing since the kitchen that she hadn't quite managed to hide.
The warmth had nowhere to go. It just stayed.
So they worked. Catherine had insights about the canapés that were, infuriatingly, correct, and Theo updated the brief without giving her the satisfaction of saying so.
They went through the lighting spec, the timeline broken into fifteen-minute segments, and the volunteer assignments for the night itself.
Catherine made notes in that small, controlled handwriting Theo knew too well.
Theo watched the curve of each letter for a beat too long before returning to her screen.
The rhythm between them had come back so easily that Theo kept almost forgetting why it had been gone.
And then she would remember, and it would settle back into her chest, and she would keep working.
The remembering was manageable. It had teeth.
It kept her honest. What was harder was the forgetting.
She had caught herself twice already, about to say something the way she used to, casually, without first checking whether it was allowed yet.
She reached for the remaining stack of papers while she still had the sense to. Work was safer.
Theo slid the pages across the table. “Program running order,” she said. “I can’t decide. Tell me which one.”
Catherine looked at all three. "What's the difference?"
“Version one opens with remarks, then the performance, then dinner. Version two swaps the remarks and the performance. Version three opens with the performance, moves straight into dinner, and cuts my remarks entirely.”
“Version three,” Catherine said, without hesitation.
Theo looked up. She waited for the smile, the reveal that she was joking.
Nothing.
“I spent two weeks on those remarks.”
“Save them for next year.” Catherine slid version three in front of her and stacked the others neatly aside.
“Open with the music. Set the tone before anyone’s said a word.
People will still be arriving, still half in their coats, carrying whatever kind of day they just had.
Give them something beautiful first.” She glanced up.
“Lead with the thing that doesn’t ask anything of them except to listen. ”
Theo stared at version three. Then at the other two. “Hm.”
"The remarks will keep," Catherine said.
"That's assuming they don't fire me for fucking this whole thing up."
“Theodora,” Catherine said, calm and certain, “when have you ever fucked anything up?”
Theo let out a laugh that died halfway through.
Once. Seven months ago.
The memory surfaced uninvited. She knew they were both thinking the same thing.
Catherine was quiet for a beat too long. And then Theo heard it. The small sound of Catherine's notebook closing. She'd been half-expecting it all morning, she realized. The way you half-expect a storm when the air has been a certain way all day.
"I should have said this at the coffee place last week.
But, I owe you an apology," Catherine said.
"I've been working on myself for the past few months.
" She paused, swallowed. "Working on understanding why I do the things I do.
And one of the things I've had to sit with—that I've had to be honest about—is how unfair I was to you. I fucked us up, Theodora."
Theo didn't say anything. She wasn't sure she trusted her voice yet.
She'd thought about this moment so many times since Catherine had appeared at that volunteer meeting, not planned for it, not expected it, but thought about it in the vague, aching way you think about things you're not sure will ever arrive.
She'd imagined having things to say. Things she'd been carrying around for months that would finally have somewhere to go.
But sitting here now, watching Catherine look at her with such a pained expression, all of them had dissolved.
"I didn't tell you about the epilepsy," Catherine continued, "because with you, I could still be who I was before the Royal Albert Hall.
The one who hadn't lost control in front of five thousand people and been turned into a gif.
" She said it flatly, without self-pity.
"You didn't know about any of that, and so with you, I could just be myself, not the cautionary tale.
But I was selfish with that. I kept it from you because I needed it, not because it was fair to you. "
Theo inhaled slowly. "I just—I didn’t understand how you could end things the way you did, after everything.”
"I was embarrassed." The words came out simply, without embellishment.
"And I took that embarrassment, and I dressed it up as concern for you, as protecting the balance of the relationship, as being pragmatic.
But underneath all of it, I was just—I was ashamed of what you'd seen.
And instead of dealing with that, I projected it onto us.
I decided you would eventually see me differently, would eventually leave, and I ended it before you had the chance.
" She met Theo's eyes. "I made a decision about your feelings on your behalf.
About what you could handle. About what you would eventually feel when you looked at me.
I decided all of that without asking you, because it was easier than being afraid of the answer.
" She paused. "But you deserved better than that from me. You deserved to be asked."
Theo felt the words land one by one. She'd expected to feel anger, or relief, or vindication.
What she actually felt was quieter and more complicated than any of those things.
It was something closer to grief, not for what had happened but for how unnecessary it had been.
How much had been lost to fear that could have been plainly, honestly said.
"It did hurt," Theo said. "Not the reaction to me seeing you having a seizure, I understood that.
I understood being frightened and overwhelmed and not knowing how to let someone in.
But walking out of that hospital and back to The Lenox that night.
" She paused. "You made me feel like being close to you was conditional on you being in control of the impression you made.
And the moment that slipped, I wasn't allowed in anymore. "
Catherine's jaw tightened. She nodded, once. She didn't try to soften it. "I know."
They looked at each other across the table, covered in seating charts and running orders, and the logistical architecture of an evening designed to celebrate a hundred and fifty years of people showing up for each other.
A moment passed. Then another.
“I know I have no right to ask, but I’d like to know.” Catherine hesitated, just a fraction. “Are you—Have you dated anyone since?"
Her voice stayed steady. Steadier than Theo suspected hers would have been, if their positions were reversed.
The honest answer and the easy answer were not the same, and Theo had promised herself, somewhere around the time she'd stopped dreading her mother's calls, that she was done choosing easy.
“For a little while,” Theo said. “A month, maybe.”
She heard how calm she sounded and almost resented it.
“Her name’s Lucy. She started working with Nat at the hospital.” Theo kept her eyes on Catherine’s, made herself keep them there. “It didn’t become anything serious. It just…ran its course.”
Catherine didn’t react at first. Or rather, she did, but it was subtle enough that anyone else might have missed it. Her spine went a little straighter. Her mouth pressed thin before she caught it. A pause, barely there, but there nevertheless. Then her eyes closed. Just for a moment.
“Oh,” she said.
And Theo felt it land between them.
It wasn’t outrage. It wasn’t even jealousy. It was something like regret. As if Catherine had known, in theory, that time had passed. That other people existed. But hearing it spoken aloud made it solid in a way she hadn’t prepared for. Like the abstract had just become very, very specific.
"After the hospital," Theo said, because she'd started and she needed to finish, “I felt pushed away.
Discarded isn't the right word, but something in that direction.
And I needed—" She paused. "I needed someone to want to be close to me. To not change their mind about wanting me too. It wasn't about replacing what we had. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.
It was just about not disappearing into myself entirely.
" She looked down at her hands, then back up.
"Lucy was kind. And it was what it was."
Catherine nodded. Her voice was careful and genuine in equal measure when she said, "I'm glad you weren't alone."
It cost her something to say it. Theo could see that clearly, the slight effort, the conscious choice to mean it rather than just speak it. And the fact that she'd made that choice, that she'd said it anyway and meant it, landed somewhere in Theo's chest and stayed there.
"Catherine," Theo said.
"Mm."
"Thank you," She waited until Catherine was looking at her directly. “For the apology.”
"I just needed you to know that I understand what I did, and I’m sorry for it. And that I'm different from what I was." She paused. "Well, I'm trying to be."
Theo nodded slowly. "I believe you."
The simplicity of it seemed to catch Catherine off guard. She blinked, something shifting in her face, relief, maybe, or the feeling of having braced for impact and found the ground gentler than expected.
Theo reached across the table. Not far, just enough to cover Catherine's hand with hers.
Catherine looked down at their hands. Then up at Theo. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She simply ran her thumb over Theo’s knuckles.
Theo withdrew her hand and pulled the running order back toward her. "Okay, so, version three," she said. "We open with the band. I'll confirm with them tomorrow."
"Good," Catherine said, her voice unsteady in a way she was clearly choosing not to address.
They worked through the rest of the afternoon without mentioning any of it again, and the room stayed small and full of paper, and outside The Mission went about its Thursday, and that was enough.
By five o'clock, the table had been reduced to three neat stacks and a to-do list that was, for the first time, actually manageable. Theo closed her laptop. Catherine capped her pen and slid her notebook into her bag.
Theo looked at the table. Then at Catherine. "Are you free tomorrow?"
Catherine looked up, and for just a second her expression was completely unguarded. "I am. Luis is handling renovations at the studio, so he doesn't need me. And I only have therapy and Noah on Mondays, so I can come in every day if that helps."
Theo looked at her. "Every day?"
"Is that a problem?"
"No," Theo said. "No, it's really not."
Catherine held her gaze for a moment, something pleased at the edges of her expression. "Good. Then I'll see you tomorrow."
"Cool." The word was out before Theo could stop it. She heard it land and immediately wanted to slide directly under the conference table and wait there until Catherine had left the building, possibly the state.
Catherine's mouth curved. "Cool," she echoed, entirely at ease with it, and picked up her bag.
She waited until Catherine had gone before she allowed herself to sink back in her chair and stare at the ceiling for a considerably longer time than was strictly professional.
It had been a long day. Hard in all the ways that mattered and good in all the same ones.