Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I prided myself on being a person who was hard to ruffle. My skin was steel, near impossible to get under. Growing up in the elitist atmosphere, it was almost a necessity to have thick skin. Even when bad things happened, I rarely let it bother me. In fact, more often than not, I laughed.
Right now, though, I felt effectively ruffled.
I stared at the phone in my hand Wednesday morning, but the contents on the screen hadn’t changed in the past five minutes I’d been staring at it. The sender hadn’t changed, nor had the message.
Sender: Aaron Astor
Subject: Greetings
Hello Margot,
I hope this email finds you well. I know this is coming very delayed, but I wanted to reach regarding the meeting we had to cancel last week and express my deepest apologies. I can see, upon reflection, how that might look. While I don’t have room in my schedule to plan another meeting, I do hope we can continue communication like this until I arrive on the east coast. I should’ve reached out earlier, but I fear you will find that thoughtfulness isn’t my strong suit.
Thank you for being patient with me.
I look forward to your reply.
Fondly,
Aaron
I wasn’t sure what about the message bothered me most. That he’d written it as a business email, that he was just now reaching out, that he just assumed I’d give him a free pass for the radio silence until now, or the way he’d signed off.
Fondly. Fondly ?
“He already is unbearable,” I said to Nancy. She sat across from me at the oak table, her teacup sitting untouched in front of her. She focused on her biscuits and how terribly overbaked they were. “‘ Thank you for being patient ’—it isn’t as if I had a choice.”
Nancy grunted in response.
“An email, Nancy? The first time he reaches out to me, he sends a godforsaken email? And signs it off with fondly ?”
She knocked a frail knuckle against the top of her biscuit. “Are they trying to break their customer’s teeth?”
I sat back in my seat. The tearoom at the country club was empty this time of day, mostly because this was when they hosted hot yoga down in the workout wing. It left Nancy and me to enjoy our tea in peace, and that was all that mattered to me.
Since Mimosa Morning, my parents had implemented a new rule: now, I could no longer go anywhere without Sumner Pennington, not even going to Nancy’s alone. So, due to the addendum, Sumner had accompanied Nancy and me for tea, though he wasn’t present at the moment.
He’d gone out into the hallway to answer a phone call, though I could still see him pass in front of the doorway from time to time, no doubt checking to make sure I hadn’t done anything to get us both into trouble.
Now, I turned the contents of the email, which had arrived in my inbox shortly after Sumner stepped out into the hall, over and over in my mind, unable to stop one line of thought from surfacing. I never considered myself a conspiracy theorist, like Sumner had said, but I couldn’t help from wandering down that path. What if… what if Sumner was Aaron Astor? What if that was why “Aaron” was finally sending an email—because I’d told Sumner I wanted to speak to him.
No. It didn’t make sense.
But…
I looked over my shoulder once more, but Sumner was still in the hall. I leaned forward, lowered my voice. “Aaron Astor wouldn’t go undercover to meet me first… would he?”
Nancy raised a gray eyebrow at me. “Why would he go to all that trouble?”
“To get an idea of the woman he’s going to marry?”
“He hasn’t seemed at all interested in the woman he was going to marry before, has he? Hasn’t called, hasn’t reached out to you personally?”
“Well, no, but?—”
“I doubt he’d go through all that trouble for you, dearie.”
“Right?” I picked up my tea and drew in a breath of the floral scent before taking a sip. I made a face. Steeped far too long. “Right. That stuff only happens in movies.”
Nancy picked up her tea biscuit and made a face at it, hitting it onto the table. Not even a crumb fell off. “Then again, it isn’t too often you see an arranged marriage in this day and age, either.”
I looked at my phone again, though the words on the email hadn’t changed. “ Fondly ,” I scoffed. My anger grew each time the word echoed in my head. “I met my future mother-in-law last weekend. It’s funny, isn’t it? I met Mrs. Astor before I ever even spoke with her son.”
Nancy pursed her lips at me, crumbs from her biscuit dotting at the corner of her mouth. “It isn’t funny.”
“Not funny ha-ha.”
The server came over and replaced our biscuit plates with the brunch we ordered. For Nancy, it’d been a simple platter—eggs, sourdough toast, roasted potatoes. For me, avocado toast. Not nearly as brilliant as the toast at Pierre’s, but close. Sumner had ordered their pot roast hash. Thank God they didn’t serve beans on toast.
I picked up my fork in my right hand and grabbed my knife with my left. “Sumner hid from her, did I tell you that? Mrs. Astor, I mean. Well, he says he was hiding from my father, but?—”
“Sumner, Sumner,” Nancy said in a chiding voice. She, too, followed my movements and picked up her fork in her right hand. Holding the silverware this way, against the “proper” table manners, was a habit I’d learned from her, a small show of rebellion against the strict rules of etiquette. “You talk about him an awful lot.”
“I do not. You just only listen to me when I bring up his name. And besides, he’s my friend. I can talk about him.”
“You can’t be friends.”
I stabbed a piece of my toast with my fork, making sure it had an ample amount of salmon, but paused before taking a bite. “Stuck in the dinosaur age, are you? Men and women can be friends.”
“It’s not that men and women can’t be friends.” Nancy pointed her fork at me. “It’s that you two can’t be friends.”
“And why not?”
She began cutting up her eggs. “You can’t be friends with someone you kissed.”
Sometimes it slipped my mind I’d ever kissed Sumner, because in that moment, he hadn’t been my focus—my mother’s reaction had. I still sometimes found myself wishing I’d paid more attention when I’d pressed my lips to his, lingered against them just a bit longer. “You were the one to told me to be his friend first,” I reminded her. “Are you forgetting that in your old age?”
“That was before I saw how you act around him.”
“And how do I act?”
“Like you’re thawing on the inside.”
Thawing . Me? Because of Sumner ? “Perhaps you need to get your eyes checked,” I grumbled, trying to shake off the thought.
“Sorry,” Sumner said as he approached, smoothing his hand down the front of his dark buttoned shirt. I jumped at his sudden appearance, but he didn’t look like he heard what Nancy had said.
“Anyone important on the phone?” Nancy asked, curbing no corners as he settled back into his seat.
“Just a friend from back home,” he replied, picking up his silverware to cut into his pot roast hash. He picked it up the correct way—knife in his right hand and his fork in his left. “I told him I’d call him back later.”
“Do you talk to your friends back home much?” Nancy pressed. The question might’ve seemed innocent enough to anyone else, but I saw through her and the shifty way she looked at him. “Do you miss them much?”
“I text them here and there,” Sumner replied good-naturedly. “I didn’t really have many friends back in Cali, honestly. I worked most of the time, and it kept me busy.”
“One must have a good balance of work and play,” Nancy said with a sage nod. “What did you do? Margot said you worked at a company after graduation—what did you do there?”
He raised up his teacup, holding it the refined way I’d see at tea parties. “I started from the bottom at a company as a secretary.”
Nancy had all but abandoned her food now to play inquisitor. “What company? ”
“A small startup.”
“In what field?”
“Nancy,” I said calmly, though all but glaring at her from across the table. “Let the poor man eat.”
“A secretary,” Nancy mused. “Makes sense why Margot’s parents were so willing to hire you, then. At least, to some extent. I am still perplexed by that. Aren’t you, Margot?”
“They hired him because they needed someone to babysit me while they prepped for Annalise’s wedding.”
“Yes, but why him ? A man, and a young one at that.”
That, honestly, made a bit less sense. If my parents were to hire a secretary for me, I would have expected it to be a woman. If not a woman, then a man in his fifties or older. Not near enough in age to me that someone could’ve thought we were dating. We both turned to Sumner, since only he knew the answer.
“I think your parents might’ve thought I’d be able to understand you better,” he said slowly, turning his attention to his plate. “Since we’re close in age.”
My parents wouldn’t have wanted anyone who might’ve understood me. The purpose of hiring Sumner wasn’t to find me a playmate, but to be their warden in the interim. They’d done a wonderful job at isolating me nearly my entire life. They wouldn’t have started being thoughtful now. “That’s what they told you?” I asked.
He blinked. “Yeah, I think it was something like that.”
Growing up in the social circles I had, I’d gotten very good at hearing a lie when spoken. Usually, there were other tells to aid in the deception hunting. Rapid blinking—check. No eye contact—check. Fiddling hands, forced smiles, fake laughs. It was more common? to hear a lie than it was to hear the truth, and perhaps that was why Sumner had been so refreshing. When he spoke, I never had to worry about hearing a lie in his voice.
Until now.
Nancy caught my eye as she reached for her own cup of tea. It was clear; she heard it too.
When it came to my parents, the waters grew muddied with Sumner, for whatever reason. And perhaps it was time to get to the bottom of it.
“Margot.”
Sumner looked up before I did; I didn’t even flinch at the unexpected voice calling my name directly behind me. Instead, I sawed off a piece of my avocado toast. “Good morning. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Ms. Nancy,” my father greeted luxuriously, donning a tone that he used with no one else but her. He had to butter her up, after all, if he wanted the property his hotel sat on to be left to him in the will. “It’s been far too long since our paths have crossed.”
“It has, hasn’t it?” Nancy’s tone held no affection as she picked up her water. She didn’t even spare him a look. “Took you long enough. I certainly wasn’t about to seek you out.”
“Margot has been keeping up appearances, hasn’t she? She’s my proxy.” My father said it like a joke.
No one laughed.
My father laid his hand on my shoulder, causing me to still at once. His hand was firm, and even through the material of the shoulder pad stitched into my suit jacket, it weighed heavy. “Margot, there’s someone who would like to speak with you.”
That “someone” was most likely him, and he was only trying to be polite about it in front of my companions. I’d been wondering when he’d approach me regarding what happened on Saturday. “Can’t I finish my meal first?”
My father hesitated, and if I looked, I’d probably have found him looking from Sumner to Nancy. He knew he had to be tactful. “This is a guest we cannot keep waiting.”
I set my silverware down and turned. My father stood as an imposing figure behind me, taking up my view with the broad frame of his own shoulders. His expression was flat and clear, though it was one he normally donned around me. I would’ve been far more uncomfortable if I could’ve been able to tell what he was feeling—though there was something in his eyes that still put me on edge.
“Keep Nancy company,” I told Sumner as I pushed my chair back. He wasn’t looking at me, though, but at my father. “Nancy, don’t grill him for information.”
“Hurry back, now,” Nancy said, finally regarding my father. Her features always held a bit of a frown, but it seemed more prominent now. “Your tea will get cold.”
My father was silent as he escorted me from the room, which didn’t bode well. I wondered if he’d take me all the way back to his office in the hotel or if we could talk this out in one of the meeting rooms. I at least had more time to think of what to say than I’d had with my mother, giving me more time to figure out what could appease him.
But as we stepped into the lobby of the country club, I realized there really was someone waiting to speak with me, and it was Vivienne Astor.
Today, instead of a suit, she wore a flowy sundress and a lightweight cardigan, one that fit well with the higher temperatures of the day. Her brown hair was back out of her face up by a pair of sunglasses, and she had a pale yellow Claire-Haute purse nestled at the crook of her elbow. She looked different from the authoritative, sure women I’d seen at Mimosa Morning in her Malstoni suit, but her presence wasn’t any less prominent. It made me wonder, briefly, what I’d look like in a sundress.
Whereas I stiffened upon seeing her, her features softened at the sight of me, almost in a welcoming expression. “Margot,” she greeted as I came close. “Lovely to see you.”
Lovely. It wasn’t the word I expected her to use, but then again, she must’ve still thought it was Yvette who caused the commotion on Saturday. My father, discreetly laying his hand on my back, shuffled me forward. “Mrs. Astor, hi,” I greeted. When she stuck her hand out, I pressed mine into it.
She hadn’t been shaking my hand, though, but captured and held it. Her fingers held a pleasant warmth. “You’re a difficult lady to track down.”
“I didn’t realize you were still in Addison,” I said honestly. My parents hadn’t said anything at all about her extended stay. “I—I thought you were only here for that day.”
“I had a few more things to take care of,” she replied, and then lowered her voice. “But I wanted to see you before I left, given what happened Saturday.”
I was all too aware of my father’s presence, his hand remaining on my back like a warning. “S-Saturday?”
“You thought the little tumble was subtle?” A corner of her lips lifted, and she looked into the mirror to inspect her expression. “Then again, perhaps it was. No one else noticed.”
Everyone else was already three mimosas deep , I thought, but took a step closer. “I’ll pay for it. I know I can’t replace it, but I’ll pay for the damage.” My eagerness wasn’t just due to the fact that my father hadn’t moved his hand, nor was it because I wanted to be on her good side. The guilt over damaging the garment was enough to scar me.
“It was a one-of-a-kind,” she said, still holding my hand. “And still is. A little stain doesn’t change that.”
I frowned at her, wondering if her nonchalance was coming just before she snapped at me. “But… but it’s ruined.”
“Besides, it’s just orange juice and vodka. I could probably remove the stain myself at home. Why does a spill ruin a garment? Why does a stitch by a different tailor make it less valuable?” Vivienne pursed her lips a little. “I see you’re a woman of great taste, with that Gilfman you’re wearing now, but who taught you these things? That if something isn’t perfect, it deserves to be thrown out?”
I felt a little ashamed under the directness of her stare, at the way she phrased the question. Ashamed of myself for unconsciously thinking that way, ashamed that it was something that someone had to point out to me—someone as elegant as her.
Vivienne folded her hands in front of her and gave me a passive expression. “Tell me why you spilled, Margot, and I’ll consider what I want in repayment.”
I wished she could’ve been like any of the other club members, so suffocating with a stick up her ass and a chip on her shoulder, so I could lie to her. Though the excuse was childish, there wasn’t a different one I could give. “She asked you a question, Margot,” my father told me, as if I was a child and needed prompting.
Vivienne looked at him, but said nothing.
“I didn’t want the others to see what Aaron looked like before I did.” I winced after I confessed it.
Vivienne took it in with a soft head nod. “So, you caused that woman to spill her drink to stop me?”
I could feel my cheeks burn. “I—I don’t know what I was thinking. I did it on impulse.”
“I see.” Her voice gave nothing away. I held my breath as I stared at the tiled ground, waiting for her decision. “Would you like to see him? Aaron? I’ll show you a picture first, before anyone else.”
When I looked at her, her expression was light, almost caring, an expression I rarely saw. Especially not at the country club. She had her phone pulled out in her hand already, though her screen was still black. I stared at it, at her offer, the meaning of it slowly breaking through my surprise of it. This was my opportunity to finally see my fiancé. To see if he truly was a frog or a prince. To see him first.
To see if he was Sumner or not.
What does it change? The thought surfaced like a buoy breaching the water. Seeing him now or seeing him in a few weeks. What will it change? What if it makes you feel worse?
And that, ultimately, caused my stomach to sink. “ No,” I managed to get out, listening to the thoughts even though I wasn’t sure I should’ve trusted them. “Thank you, but if he prefers to wait until we see each other in person, I’ll wait.”
Vivienne nodded, pocketing her phone. “Then I won’t show anyone else, then, either. Your respect, Margot, is what I seek more than anyone else’s.” With this, she gave a not-so-discreet glance once more at my father.
His hand at my back pressed in deeper, though I tried to ignore it. “Mine?”
“Why should I worry about what anyone else thinks? They aren’t the one my son has his eye on.” Vivienne came close enough to touch me lightly on the shoulder, her expression as gentle as ever. She drew me close, just enough that it forced my father’s hand off my back. “If you change your mind, just let me know. Bit of advice, though. Next time, words go a long way.”
The scolding felt very motherly—at least, in the way a mother was supposed to scold. The intention was there, but soft, in a way that made me feel guilty, but not weighed down. It wasn’t anything like the tone my mother used. I don’t know where I went so wrong to have a daughter like you .
“I will be taking Mrs. Astor to the airport to fly back to California,” my father informed me, his hand falling onto my shoulder. “Then she’ll be back for Annalise and Michael’s wedding at the end of the month.”
“Exciting times, seeing Aaron’s best friend getting married,” she murmured, pressing her hands together. “ And it won’t be long until we have another wedding to prepare for, hopefully.”
My father squeezed my shoulder again until I smiled.
“You’ll be riding with us, right?” Vivienne asked me. “I’d love to talk more on the car ride to the airport.”
My initial reaction was to decline, thinking of Sumner and Nancy waiting in the tearoom. Strangely, though, a part of me didn’t want to decline. While I wanted to go back and enjoy my avocado toast, I, too, wanted to get to know Vivienne better, even if it was with the ears of my father listening in. “Of course,” I replied without my father’s prompting, offering her a genuine smile. “I’d love to.”
As we wheeled her suitcase toward the entrance, I replayed the conversation over and over in my head. Kindness was such a rarity, so much so that it seemed wrong to blindly accept it. Especially coming from her. The players in this game never stopped surprising me, much like how a rug being ripped from under my feet would surprise me. Vivienne, the woman my parents had done a fine job of building up as a daunting figure in my head, turned out to be lovelier than I thought. Could someone as influential to my life as her really be that kind? Had I really gotten that lucky?
I reached up and touched my shoulder where her hand had been, swallowing hard. Perhaps I had.