19. Maren
MAREN
He is not in the bed when I wake up.
I had thought he would be. I had thought he would be because at some point in the night he turned me, in his sleep, so my back was against his chest and his arm was a band across my ribs, and the last thing I remember is his breath, warm and even, in my hair.
I had thought, in the dim, half-asleep way you think things at four in the morning, that a man who had pulled a woman against him in the dark was a man who would not, by sunrise, have already gone.
He is gone.
There is a glass of water on the nightstand. There is, on top of the slip he undid the bow of, a folded square of cream paper. I sit up. I read it. Vance call at seven. Then breakfast on the upper terrace at nine. With your father. — C.
No sweetheart. No instruction. Not even eat.
I pick the glass up. I drink half of it.
I put it down. I look at the legal pad on the writing desk across the room, which I had — last night, before he knocked — turned face-down with both hands like a child hiding a test. The yellow back of it catches in the morning light.
I get up. I put the slip on. I cross to the desk. I turn the pad over.
The third option is still not written.
I write it.
3. CR knew which Maren on Sept 4.
He stands. He puts his hand, briefly, on the top of my head — the way our father used to, the way no one in our family has done in fifteen years — and then he leaves the library, and I sit in the wing chair with my book and I don’t cry.
I search the system for Vance, R.
His reservation history goes back to 2022.
Quarterly visits, ground-floor suite, lemon banished.
The most recent reservation is the one we have now — Thursday's dinner.
There is, before that, a block on the suite.
The block was placed on August 31. The block has, in the notes field, three letters and a date. CR / 9/4.
CR / 9/4.
Cassian blocked Roland Vance’s suite three days before the call he claims was the first time he wrote my name.
By August thirty-first, he already knew the dinner was coming.
Sebastian had been told to remove the suite from circulation on August thirty-first as well.
The system shows it—three letters, a date, nothing ambiguous.
This is not the lie I caught last night. This is its older sibling.
I close the laptop. The tears don’t come.
I realize I’m past the part of this where they would.
I put the laptop in its case. I dress. I dress carefully — soft white linen, the small gold clip in my hair, the chain on my wrist — because in ninety minutes I will walk onto the upper terrace and have breakfast with my father, and I will do it the way I’ve done four hundred breakfasts with four hundred guests: composed, steady, fine.
My mother ambushes me on the stairs.
"Sweetheart!"
"Mom."
"Are you up? I have been up since six. I have been on the phone."
"With whom, Mom."
"Marguerite. Marguerite the florist, Maren. I told you about her. She has — Maren, she has garden roses in December that I have been told are nearly impossible to source, she has a connection in Ecuador, she — Cassian gave me her number this morning."
"He — what."
"He stopped me in the hall after his call. He said Delilah, I want you to call this woman, she will save us — us, he said, us, Maren — and he handed me her card. He had her card in his pocket. In his pocket, Maren."
"That's — that's nice, Mom."
"Are you all right."
"I'm fine."
"You look pale."
"I didn't sleep."
"Oh, sweetheart." She does the small thing with her face that she has, in the last week, started doing, the soft thing, and she puts her palm against my cheek the way she has not put her palm against my cheek since — I cannot, currently, think of a since.
"You poor lamb. Eat. Eat with your father.
Cassian is — he is in his calls until ten. You eat."
"Mom."
"Yes."
"Don't call Marguerite yet."
"What."
"Don't — just hold on, Mom. Don't — just — give me until tonight. Will you. Don't call her. Don't call anyone. Until tonight."
She looks at me. She looks at me with the small alert lift of her chin she does when she is, herself, registering a tell, and her hand on my cheek does not move, and her mouth — for the first time, perhaps, in my entire life — does not say the next thing she had been about to say.
"Until tonight," she says, instead.
"Thank you, Mom."
"Maren."
"Mm."
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Mom. The coffee will help."
I kiss her on the cheek. I taste her face powder. I walk past her up the corridor and I do not, until I am in the small alcove between the corridor and the upper terrace, allow my eyes to do anything at all.
My father is on the upper terrace with his crossword and a soft-boiled egg in a porcelain cup.
He does not look up when I sit. He passes me the bread basket without being asked. He pours my coffee. He waits, the way my father has, my entire life, waited, which is to say he waits until you are ready and then he waits a little longer, in case you needed a second beat.
"Dad."
"Mm."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure, Ren."
"How did you know?"
"Know what, sweetheart."
"That Mom was — that Mom was the one. How did you — how did you know."
He sets the pen down. He folds the paper in half. He looks up at me. His eyes are the kind of pale gray that mine are not — Sienna's eyes, in fact — and there is a small fan of new lines at his temples that I have not, in a year, noticed.
"That's the question, is it?"
"That's the question."
"Hmm." He picks up his coffee. "I don't know, Ren.
I don't think I knew, exactly. I think I — I think there was a thing she did, the second year we were together, where she would — she would come into the kitchen in the morning before she had said good morning to me.
She would come in. She would put the kettle on.
She would not say anything. And she would, at some point, lean back against the counter while it boiled, and she would look at me, and she would not say anything, and that was — that was the thing.
She didn't have to say anything. She — I knew where she was.
I knew what she was thinking. I knew what kind of day she was about to have.
I have not, in thirty-two years, had to ask your mother where she is.
I have always known. That's — that's, I think, the thing. "
"Dad."
"Mm."
"Do you know where I am?"
He sets his cup down.
"Ren."
"Don't — Dad. I'm not — I'm not asking you to fix it. I'm not. I just want to know if you — if you can tell. If anyone can tell."
"I can tell, Ren."
"Dad."
“I could tell on Tuesday. On the boat. The way you looked at him when he steadied you—it wasn’t the look of a month-old engagement. It was the look of someone who’d just understood what was coming.”
"Oh."
“And since yesterday I’ve known you’re carrying something, Ren. Something you learned in the last day that hurt you. I don’t know what it is. I haven’t asked Owen, though I’m sure he knows. I’m not going to ask. I’m only telling you that I can see it. So that’s your answer. Yes, I can tell.”
He picks his crossword back up.
He picks it back up because he has, in his way, given me what he has, and now he is going to let me have it, and this is, currently, the kindest thing anyone has done for me in two weeks.
"Dad."
"Mm."
"I'm going to talk to him tonight. After dinner. I want — I think I want to do it before Mom calls Marguerite."
"All right, Ren."
"Will you — will you keep her busy. Until I — until I?—"
"I will keep her busy."
"Thank you, Dad."
"Eat your bread."
I eat the bread.
I sit on the lower terrace at six and I look at the water and I make the list one last time.
Things I will say. That I went into his office.
That I read the timeline. That I checked the reservation system.
That the suite was blocked August 31. That I want him to look me in the eye and tell me that on August 31, three days before he wrote Maren refs implied, he had not, already, been, in the small private chamber of his head, deciding which Maren he meant.
Things I will not say.
That since Tuesday morning in the kitchen I haven’t known what to do with my own face when he looks at me.
That at lunch yesterday, his hand on my knee made me feel chosen in a way I haven’t since I was young, and I have no idea how to give that feeling back without snapping something in the process.
I may well be the most foolish woman in this house. Sienna included.
So I’ll end it. Tonight. After dinner, once my mother’s gone up. I’ll tell him I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll hand back the ring—the ring I haven’t been able to remove for an hour—and then I’ll go.
The sun does the slow honey-lowering it does at this hour.
The wind comes off the water cool. The small string of bulbs over the path comes on.
I sit until the gold goes out of the sky and the bulbs are the only light, and I sit there longer than that, with my hands in my lap and my heart, against the diamond at my finger, going very steady.
I will love him after tonight. I am, I think, already going to.
I just am not, I have decided, going to do it from inside this house.