15. Maren
MAREN
He does not tell me about the powder room in the morning.
He tries. He starts twice, over coffee, with the particular cleared-throat opening of a man preparing a sentence with consequences, and both times Sebastian comes through the door — once with the term sheet from Vance's office, once with a contractor on the phone — and the moment passes, and Cassian does not come back to it.
I notice that he doesn’t come back to it. I notice it the way I’ve started noticing things this week—quietly, without comment, filing it in the small chamber I’ve been keeping behind my breastbone since I sat in the powder room on Wednesday with the diamond throwing rainbows on the wall.
"Maren. Sweetheart."
"Mm."
"Walk with me to the breakfast room. Your mother has, apparently, plans."
"Plans."
"She has been, I am told by Sebastian, in the breakfast room since seven thirty with three magazines and a notepad. He thinks it would be wise for me to be there when you walk in."
"What kind of plans, Cassian."
"Wedding plans."
"Oh, no."
"Mm."
"Cassian, I cannot — I have not had enough coffee for?—"
"I know."
He hands me the second cup he must have poured before I came downstairs.
His palm settles briefly against my back as we start walking, and it stays there, steady.
My body—tired, off-balance from a long night—leans toward the warmth without my consent.
I tell myself it’s only because his hand is warm.
I’m telling myself a lot of things right now.
My mother has three magazines and a notepad. The magazines are open to specific pages. The pages have been marked with the small flag stickers I last saw in her office during my Common App. She is in pearls at nine in the morning, which is — it has to be said — a tell.
"Sweetheart!"
"Hi, Mom."
“Sit, sit. Cassian, sit. I want you to look at—Graham, where is—Graham, the stack.”
My father pushes a stack of printed pages across the table, eyes still on his crossword. His face carries the slow, practiced patience of someone who’s been enduring this exact routine for the past hour.
"Mom—"
"Don't Mom me, Maren. We are not going to ambush him. I’m asking one question. One."
"Delilah." Cassian sits down beside me. He pours her coffee without being asked. "Ask the question."
"Are you opposed to a winter wedding?"
"I — what."
"Winter, Cassian. December, January. Late February at the absolute outside.
I have been thinking — and Maren will tell you I do not, frankly, do this often — I have been thinking that the orchard idea is lovely but the orchard is a spring proposition.
The cliff at the property, however — the cliff — there is something about a winter wedding on a coast. Have you been to a winter wedding on a coast, Cassian. "
"I have not."
"It is transcendent. It is — Graham, tell him."
"It is transcendent," my father says, into his crossword.
"And December is nine months away. Which is — which is long enough, but it is not — we are not, you know, dragging our feet.
I have a feeling about this. I have called the Marlowe house — yes, I called your private box, Cassian, thank you for the address, the woman who took the call was lovely — and they said you have the long terrace cleared on the second weekend in December and Maren, sweetheart, I just — I just want you to look at the magazines. "
I look at the magazines.
I look at the magazines and my hand under the table has gone, of its own accord, to Cassian's knee, because his thigh next to mine is the only solid thing in the room.
My mother is animated in a way I have not seen her animated since Owen's bar passage.
Her cheeks are pink. Her notepad — when I sneak a look at it — has a column labeled florists.
"Mom."
"What."
"Cassian and I haven't even — we haven't talked about — we haven't picked a?—"
"Of course you haven't. That is what I am for. I am not making a decision. I am giving you options."
"Mom—"
"December second."
"Mom."
"Maren."
Cassian's hand finds mine on his knee. He squeezes, once, in the particular way he squeezed it last night when he wanted me to look at him, and I look at him, and he looks at me with something quiet behind his eyes.
"Delilah," he says, without taking his eyes off me. "Let us think about December second."
"Oh — you — of course?—"
"Pull the date for me. Don't book anything. Pull it."
"Cassian, I will pull the entire month?—"
"Just the second weekend. Don't tell anyone yet."
"Of course. Of course. Graham, did you hear?—"
"I heard, Del."
"Maren, sweetheart, are you crying."
"I'm — no, Mom. The coffee is hot."
My mother smiles at me. She smiles at me the way she has been smiling at me all week, which is a smile I do not entirely recognize as hers — soft at the corners, almost wet, the smile of a woman looking at a daughter she has, finally, found a place to put.
I excuse myself. I walk out of the breakfast room with my coffee, and I walk past Sebastian in the hall without seeing him, and I walk down the corridor to the small powder room off the foyer because it is, currently, the only room in the house I trust. I close the door. I put my face in my hands.
The lie is, I realize, ten days long now.
The lie has, in ten days, acquired a date.
A street. An orchard. A grandmother. A wedding venue.
A florist column. A transcendent winter coast. The lie has, in ten days, acquired the only version of my mother I have ever liked.
I don’t know how to give the lie back. I don’t know how to give my mother back the version of herself she was on Sunday at the chef’s table, the one with the brittle laugh, the one who told me I did not need bread.
I find I don’t want to. That’s the part that scares me.
I find Cassian's office empty at noon.
It is empty because he is on a property tour with Quan, which Sebastian has put on the schedule under site walk, lower wing, and which is going to take, at minimum, ninety minutes. I have ninety minutes. I have — and I am embarrassed to say this — I have planned for the ninety minutes.
The door is not locked. It is not locked because Cassian has spent the last two days locking, instead, the third-floor server access and the staff badges and the side stairs, and I have noticed, the way I have noticed the powder room and the calls and the way he said Marlowe, that the door of this office has, since Wednesday, stood open in a kind of pointed way.
The pointedness, I am learning, is a tell of his.
He locks the things that matter. He leaves open the things that don't.
The desk, then.
I go to the desk.
I tell myself I am looking for one thing.
I am looking for the timeline. I am looking for the date in writing — the day Vance's office first reached out, the day of the staff rumor at Henri's pastry station, the day Cassian opened the velvet box in his office and slid the band onto my finger. I am looking for the spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet is on top.
It is not titled spreadsheet. It is titled VG / Q3 — TIMELINE & POS. in his handwriting, which I now know, on a small sticky note clipped to the front of the manila folder. I open the folder. There is a printed timeline. There are dates.
September 4 — VG advance team, internal call, Maren refs implied — implied, in his hand, with a careful underline.
September 6 — Castellan family dinner, resort, Sun.
September 7 — MD office mtg, ring placed, agreement.
I look at the dates. I look at the dates again. September 4 was a Wednesday. September 6 was Sunday — the Sunday of the chef's table, the Sunday of Cassian walking through the lobby past the glass alcove. September 7 was Monday — the day he called me up to his office.
September 4 is two days before the chef's table.
September 4, two days before I sat down at that table and blurted out the lie that I have, since, decided was a moment of panic — September 4, the Vance advance team had already called. Already implied. Already had, in writing, in his hand, a reference to Maren.
I sit down in his chair. I sit down in his chair very slowly. I read the page again.
Maren refs implied.
It is possible that implied means something else.
It is possible that it means Maren as a category of reference — that Maren was in the call only because someone in his office, perhaps Sebastian, had floated the idea of an engagement before either of us had the conversation in the office. It is possible.
It is possible that on September 4, two days before the chef's table, two days before I named him at dinner, the Vance group had already been told something about a fiancée by the man whose office I am currently, sitting in.
It is possible that the rumor at the pastry station was not, in fact, started by my sister.
I close the folder. I put it back exactly where it was. I put the sticky note exactly where it was. I stand up. I straighten the chair. I cross to the door, and I turn, at the threshold, and I look at the office once more.
Then I close the door behind me, gently, the way Sebastian closes doors, and I walk back down the hall to my room with my hands very steady at my sides and the small chamber behind my breastbone full of a thing I am not, currently, ready to look at.
I do not go to dinner.
I tell my mother I have a headache.
She brings me tea.