Chapter 7 #2
She opens her mouth, probably to argue, but footsteps on the gravel cut in before she can.
Camille.
And Ethan with her.
They slow when they see us standing there together.
Ethan’s gaze goes first to me, then to the box in my hands, then to Sienna.
Something hard and ugly flashes across his face before he smooths it away.
Disgust is too simple a word for it. Possessiveness without the right to it, perhaps.
Resentment. Injury. The sour look of a man who has just found the world failing to behave as he believes it should.
Camille sees it too. Of course she does. She stops in front of us with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Sienna. There you are.”
Sienna straightens almost imperceptibly. “What do you need?”
Camille’s gaze skims over the garment bags on her shoulder, the cardigan, the flat shoes practical enough for work, and then lifts again.
“Nothing urgent. I only wondered whether we should ask someone else to handle the bridal suite. It’s a busy morning, and I’d hate for you to overextend yourself.
” A thoughtful little pause. “You don’t exactly look… fresh.”
Sienna goes still beside me.
It is neatly done. Mean in the way women like Camille prefer. A sentence that can wear concern as a costume if anyone later asks what she meant by it.
I answer before Sienna can. “She looks perfectly capable.”
Camille turns to me with a light laugh. “I’m sure she does to you.”
The line hangs there for half a beat.
Ethan says nothing, which tells me he’s smart enough to know he should not.
I look at Camille and let the silence stretch just long enough to make her feel it.
“If you have concerns about staffing,” I say, “you may bring them to me. If not, I suggest you let her do the work you hired her to do.”
Camille’s smile tightens. “I was only trying to be considerate.”
“No,” I say. “You were trying to be clever. Don’t confuse the two.”
Beside me, I can feel Sienna go very still.
Ethan shifts his weight. “Father, it’s not that serious.”
I turn my head and look at him. He stops.
Camille recovers first, because she is practiced at recovery. “Of course,” she says, smooth again now. “I’m sure everything is under control.”
Sienna, to her credit, says nothing. She doesn’t look at me either. She just adjusts the garment bags on her shoulder and holds herself in that careful, contained way that tells me she hates being defended almost as much as she hates being insulted.
I hand the box to one of the passing staff before she can argue further and say, “Take these to the bridal suite.”
The staff member nods and hurries off.
Sienna looks at me then. Briefly. Her eyes are unreadable.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “I did.”
She looks at me as if she can’t decide whether to be grateful or furious.
Before she can say anything else, another woman appears from the terrace with a clipboard in hand and the expression of a woman who has already solved six problems and expects to solve six more before noon.
“Sienna,” she says, “the florist wants final confirmation on the arch arrangements, and the photographer is asking where the family should gather after breakfast.”
Sienna is grateful for the interruption. I can see it.
“I’m coming, Nadine,” she says. She turns to go, then stops and looks back at me. “Thank you for the help.”
The words are formal. Careful. Meant to put a line back where one had started to blur.
I incline my head. “Anytime.”
That earns me the smallest look from her, a flicker of exasperation that disappears almost as soon as it comes. Then she’s walking away with Nadine, back straight, pace steady, every inch of her trying to say she is untouched by any of this.
I hear footsteps behind me and know before I turn that it’s Ethan. He stops a few feet away. Not close enough to mistake this for warmth.
“She’s just the planner,” he says.
I turn slowly. “Is she?”
His jaw hardens. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He waits, perhaps expecting me to save him the effort of saying the rest. When I don’t, he goes on. “You embarrassed me last night.”
I look at my son and feel, with some weariness, that I have been having variations of this conversation with him since he was old enough to mistake ego for dignity.
“No,” I say. “You embarrassed yourself.”
His face darkens. “You took her side in front of everyone.”
“You were wrong in front of everyone.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
He takes a step closer. “You don’t know what she’s like.”
The words interest me. More than they should.
“No?” I say. “Then enlighten me.”
He hesitates. Just slightly.
There it is. The problem with men who have enjoyed too much indulgence for too long. They are often certain of their grievances and very hazy on their evidence.
Ethan folds his arms. “She likes attention.”
I think of Sienna on the terrace last night, shaking and trying not to let me see it.
I think of the way she kept her head down through breakfast, the way she seems to prefer usefulness to notice.
I think of the fact that when she disappeared from the plane months ago, she left without leaving a last name, a number, or any of the usual little hooks women use when they want to be found.
No. Attention is not her vice.
“She does not strike me that way,” I say.
Something in him snaps a little at that. “Of course she doesn’t.”
I let the silence draw out.
Then, very evenly, I ask, “What is she to you?”
He looks at me and says nothing. Which, of course, is an answer.
Interesting.
When he finally speaks, his voice is tighter. “Nothing.”
That word is a lie. I know it. He knows it. The only question is what kind.
Before I can decide how much I want to push, Camille calls out Ethan’s name. He gives me one look before leaving.
Just as soon as Ethan leaves, Yuri appears by my side. I’m distracted, still watching Sienna from the other side of the field. He follows my line of sight toward the house and says nothing for a moment. Then, because he has never had a survival instinct worth admiring, he says, “Ah.”
I glance at him. “Ah?”
“So that’s why you’ve been behaving like a man with a head injury.”
“I was shot last night,” I remind him.
“You get shot once every few months. This is different.”
I say nothing.
Yuri’s mouth twitches. “Is she the same woman?”
I keep my eyes on the terrace. “Yes.”
The answer seems to satisfy him far more than it should.
“And your son?”
I look at Ethan then. Really look at him. At the tightness in his face. At the resentment he thinks he’s hiding. At the fact that he’s still too young to understand how transparent he becomes when something matters to him.
“What about him?”
Yuri lowers his voice even further. “How much trouble is this going to be?”
I should say none. I should say it will be managed and contained and folded quietly into the endless machinery of family and business and appearances.
Instead I say, “More than I’d like.”
Yuri nods as if that confirms something he suspected the moment he saw me walk across the lawn after her.
The brunch begins almost on time. That alone feels like a miracle.
The lawn has been set beautifully, I’ll give them that.
White linen moving gently in the breeze.
Pale flowers everywhere. Silver coffee service catching the morning light.
The sort of polished, effortless elegance that only exists because fifty people have been up since dawn making sure it looks effortless.
Guests find their seats in drifting, expensive clusters. Chairs scrape softly over stone. Conversations rise and overlap. The string quartet has given up pretending this is intimate and settled into something bright and tasteful in the background.
Camille stands once everyone has settled. She lifts a champagne flute and smiles around the table, all pale silk and careful warmth, and the whole group quiets for her without needing to be asked.
“I just wanted to say a few words,” she says. “Because this is really the last morning before everything changes.”
A few soft laughs. A murmur of approval.
I look at my son.
He smiles at her. Good enough, from a distance.
Camille continues, voice bright and polished. “To new beginnings, to family, and to the future.”
Glasses rise. I lift mine because not doing so would turn this into something else, and I have no interest in explaining my mood to a lawn full of people before breakfast.
“To the future,” the table echoes.
Everyone drinks.
Breakfast begins in earnest a moment later. Plates arrive. Silver flashes in the morning light. Conversations break apart into smaller ones, lighter and easier now that the formal little performance has been completed.
I take two bites of eggs I do not want and answer a question from one of Camille’s uncles about shipping regulations with the bare minimum of civility. Halfway through his opinion on customs enforcement, I see Sienna again.
One of the servers brings me a glass of champagne with a smile. I shake my head and he moves on to the next table.
I keep my gaze on Sienna. She has finally stopped moving.
Only because one of the servers has cornered her beside the side station with what looks like a question about coffee service.
She nods, says something, takes a glass of water from the tray without really looking at it, and lifts it to her mouth.
Good.
Then, across the lawn, a chair tips over. The sound cuts through the soft noise of breakfast like a crack.
Everyone turns.
One of the bridesmaids is on her feet, hand at her throat, eyes huge. For one confused second I think she is choking. Then white foam gathers at the corner of her mouth.
She makes a terrible sound. Not a scream. Something smaller, cut off halfway.
And she drops.