13. Maren
MAREN
Sienna corners me at breakfast on Friday morning before I have had any coffee, which is, I think, a deliberate tactic.
"Mar."
"Mm."
"I have a question."
"You always have a question."
"This one is small."
"They are never small, Sienna."
"It's small. I promise."
She slides into the chair beside me with her phone face-down, which is the most alarming thing she has done all week. Her hair is up in the kind of effortless twist that takes thirty minutes to construct. Her eyes are bright. She has, evidently, already had her coffee.
"What's your address?"
I stop, halfway through buttering a piece of toast.
"Excuse me."
"Cassian's. Where you live. Where you've been living, I mean, when you're not up here."
"Why."
"Because Mom wants to send a thank-you arrangement to the housekeeper."
"He doesn't have a housekeeper."
"Mar."
"He has staff. There isn't, like — a Mrs. Henderson. It's catered. Mom can send the flowers to the resort and they'll route them."
"She said you said it was Maple Drive."
"What."
"On Monday. In the car coming up. You said you lived on Maple Drive."
"I — Sienna. I did not say Maple Drive."
"You did."
"I do not know a Maple Drive."
"Maren."
The voice comes from behind me. I do not need to turn around. I would know that Maren if I were unconscious.
Cassian's hand lands at the back of my chair as he passes — light, unhurried — and he sits down on my other side with his coffee already poured.
Sebastian, somewhere down the hall, has brought the morning to him in the order he prefers it.
He is in a soft white shirt with the cuffs already rolled. His hair is wet at the temples.
"Sienna."
"Cassian."
"What address are you trying to send my fiancée's flowers to?"
"Maple Drive."
"It's Marlowe."
He says it so casually I almost miss it. He says it the way you say pass the salt. He picks up his coffee.
"Marlowe Drive," he says. "She does this — Maren does this thing where she shortens place names in conversation.
She'll say Maple when it's Marlowe, the lake when it's Lake Wenham, the school when it's a school with a six-word name.
I have stopped correcting her. It's faster to translate than to argue. "
"Marlowe."
"Marlowe."
"Huh."
"Tell your mother to send the arrangement to the resort. We'll route it. The house number is irrelevant — there's a private box."
"Got it."
"Anything else, Sienna?"
"Nope."
"Wonderful."
She gets up. She takes her phone with her.
She walks, eventually, all the way out of the room, and I watch her go and I do not breathe until she has cleared the doorway, and the second she is gone Cassian's hand finds my knee under the table — not in the steady, possessive way it found my knee on Wednesday morning, but in the firm, pay attention way that is, currently, much worse.
"Marlowe Drive," I say.
"Mm."
"You made up a street."
"I made up a street."
"You made it up while drinking coffee."
“I’ve been making up whole maps for a week. A street, Maren… a street is the simplest lie in the set.”
"Cassian."
"Look at me."
I look at him. He is not amused, although his mouth is doing something amusement-adjacent.
He is, I realize, calibrating again. He is calibrating the look on my face and the temperature in the room and the small fact of Sienna's exit, and he is deciding, in real time, what kind of conversation we are about to have.
"Upstairs," he says.
"What."
"My study. Twenty minutes."
"Cassian."
"Twenty minutes, Maren."
He stands. He picks up his coffee. He carries it out of the room with him, and I sit at the table with my toast and my heart in my throat for, conservatively, the first ten of the twenty.
His study smells like cedar and the lemon polish the staff uses on the bookshelves.
The windows are open. The breeze coming through them is salt-soft and lifting the curtains in the slow way that, in another life, would be a thing I’d notice for its prettiness.
I am not, currently, noticing anything pretty.
I’m sitting on the edge of the leather couch — the leather couch, the one I sat on, in some sense, very differently on Tuesday morning — and Cassian has taken up a perch on the desk itself, angled toward me, one foot on the rug, the other braced against the chair.
He has, on the desk beside him, the folder. The Vance folder. The other one. The one with the tabs.
"All right," he says. "From the top."
"Cassian—"
"From the top, Maren. How did we meet."
"Cassian, your sister is going to find a Marlowe Drive?—"
"My sister?"
"Sienna. My sister. Sorry. Cassian. Your sister."
He laughs. It is the small, dry, helpless laugh I have heard from him exactly twice, and it is — I will say this once and then never again — a sound I would do unwise things to keep eliciting.
"Maren."
"What."
"How. Did. We. Meet."
"In the lobby."
"What was I doing?"
"Walking through. There was a — there was a guest complaint about the mini bar. You came down because it had escalated."
"Why had it escalate?"
"Because the guest had — hit one of the porters."
"Mm. Good. What did I do."
"You handled the guest. Quietly. The man — Mr. Whitfield, his name was Whitfield — left without an incident report and the porter was, I think, given a week off and a letter."
"You think."
"I know. I drafted the letter."
"Did you."
"Yes, Cassian. I drafted the letter. You signed it."
He is watching me. He has shifted on the desk. He is closer than he was thirty seconds ago, or I am, or both.
"What did I say to you?"
"Afterward?"
"Afterward."
"You said — you said thank you, Miss Castellan. That was all."
"That was all."
"Yes."
"And what did you say back?"
"Nothing. I — you'd already turned around. You were halfway down the hall before I could?—"
"Mm."
"What."
"I remember, Maren."
"You remember what."
"I remember the letter. I remember signing it. I do not remember Miss Castellan."
I look at him. He is not, I realize, telling a joke.
"You don't remember me from then."
"No."
"Oh."
"I am sorry, sweetheart."
"Don't sweetheart me."
"All right."
"It's — fine. I — most people don't, why would you?—"
"I would have. If I had been paying attention.
I am telling you, in this moment, that I was not paying attention.
I am telling you because you are, currently, worried that I have been performing attention, and I have not been.
I noticed you on Sunday. The first time I noticed you, Maren, was Sunday. "
"Cassian."
"What."
"This isn't — this isn't the rehearsal. This isn't Vance prep. What are you doing."
"I am rehearsing the part I missed."
He says it without smiling. His foot stays flat on the rug, his hand still braced against the desk, and his eyes—gray, the silver-edged gray they go in the morning when he hasn’t been sleeping—stay on my face.
"The part you missed."
"Yes."
"Cassian."
"What did you wear that day?"
"What day?"
"The day of the letter."
"The — the uniform. I was working. Cassian, why are you?—"
"What did your hair look like?"
"Up. It's always up."
“And when the shift was over—what did you say to your friend? The one with the curls. Livian. What did you tell her, Maren, when you slipped into the back office at the end of that day.”
I stare at him.
"Cassian."
"What did you tell her?"
"I'm not — I don't remember. It was — it was a year ago, I?—"
"Mm."
"How do you?—"
"I don't. I am inventing. I am inventing the part I missed. I am asking you to tell me."
He pushes off the desk. He crosses the rug. He sits beside me on the couch, very close, and his thigh comes against mine, and his hand finds the inside of my wrist where it has, of its own accord, gone to my throat.
"What did you tell Livian, Maren?"
"I told her—" My voice has gone small. "I told her that Mr. Rourke had thanked me by name."
"Did you."
"Yes."
"And what did she say?"
"She said, don't get any ideas, honey."
He laughs. Once. Quietly. He does not let go of my wrist. His thumb is at my pulse.
"That was excellent advice."
"It was."
"You took it."
"I took it."
"Mm. And here we are."
"Here we are."
He bends. He bends not all the way — not to my mouth, although my mouth has, traitorously, lifted — but to the place just below my ear where the small tendon of my neck is going, currently, very fast under the soft of his thumb.
"Cassian."
"What."
"Sebastian is going to walk in here in approximately forty seconds with the pre-call brief."
"Forty-three."
"You — what."
"It is at ten past. I checked the clock."
"You — when did you check the clock?"
"Before you came in."
"Cassian."
"Maren."
"Move."
"In what direction."
"You — Cassian, I swear to God?—"
He laughs against my throat. He does not kiss me. He does, however, drag his nose, slowly, along the soft skin under my jaw, and he sits up and he stands and he is at the window with his coffee, perfectly composed, when Sebastian raps once on the open door and steps inside with the brief.
"Sir."
"Mm. Bring it here."
I sit on the couch with my hands in my lap and my pulse in my ears and the small, faint smell of his soap on the side of my neck, and Sebastian — bless Sebastian — does not, in any way, look at me, and I, in some small chamber I have been pretending not to keep, decide, finally, to stop pretending I do not want this.
It is, I know, an unwise decision.
I make it anyway.