Chapter 7
Ivy
By nine in the morning, my phone has five more jobs no one hired me to do: Beatrice’s pickup, Helena’s private luncheon guests, a family gift, a breakfast seating fight, and foundation flowers.
The wedding production meeting starts in eleven minutes.
At the worktable outside the glass gallery, today’s Seabriar task sheets sit beneath my tablet and cold coffee. Staff pass with garment racks and white roses. A drill catches, stops, then catches again in the ballroom.
I answer only what belongs to Seabriar. The family errands go back to Gabriel and Helena.
My phone vibrates again before I can turn it facedown.
“I need Sophie for an hour,” Helena says.
She stands at the other end of the worktable in cream trousers, already wearing the expression of an order. Sophie is checking escort cards against the room list.
“Sophie is assigned to wedding operations until four,” I say.
“This is wedding related. My guests need their luncheon bags delivered, and the family gifts still have to be wrapped.”
“The luncheon is private. So are the gifts.”
Sophie looks at me, not Helena.
“Finish the escort cards,” I tell her. “Then help Lila with the detail inventory.”
She nods and carries the list toward the gallery.
Helena’s mouth tightens. “Emma’s wedding is in four days. This is not the time to abandon the family because you’re angry with Gabriel.”
There it is.
Not daughter-in-law when security opens my bag. Not family when cameras need someone to cut loose. Family when there are ribbons to tie and calls no one wants to return.
“You cannot remove me from the family when you need a scapegoat and restore me when you need labor.”
The drill stops. The sentence carries across the gallery.
Gabriel enters from the service corridor, phone at his ear, and takes in Helena and the gift notes.
“Send the luncheon requests to me,” he says to his mother. “And choose your own family gift.”
Helena turns on him. “You have no idea what Beatrice gives these people.”
“Then I’ll ask Beatrice.”
He does not look at me for confirmation.
Good.
I gather my task sheets. “My staff work for this wedding. They do not run your private errands.”
“You used to understand that family events cannot be separated into invoices.”
“I used to make that convenient for you.”
I leave her with Gabriel and walk into the gallery.
The wedding keeps moving.
At the detail table, Lila has arranged Emma’s invitation suite, perfume bottle, and heirloom earrings on pale blue silk. The earrings are old mine-cut diamonds set beneath small pearls. They make a soft, cold weight in my palm when I straighten one before Lila lifts her camera.
Hairspray hangs in the warm air from the bridal fitting upstairs. Roses and cut ribbon cover the next table. Lila’s shutter clicks while the stylist turns the velvet box a fraction toward the window.
Emma steps beside me in one shoe, the other dangling from her fingers.
“Tell me no one needs me for ten minutes.”
My banquet captain appears in the doorway. “We need the bride’s decision on the rain-plan aisle. The florist marked two widths.”
Emma closes her eyes. “Of course she did.”
“Five minutes,” I tell her. “I’ll show you both options.”
She follows me toward the glass corridor, still carrying her shoe.
Behind us, Lila lowers her camera to change lenses. The stylist picks up the earrings and looks around for the velvet box, now buried beneath ribbon samples.
“I’ll keep these out of the way,” she says.
She places them inside a spare ivory shoe box beneath the equipment table. Then she flips over Lila’s printed equipment list and writes `E arr—ivory box` across the back.
No one calls after Emma.
* * *
Gabriel is on his fourth family call when I return from the afternoon menu check.
He has claimed one corner of the shared operations table, far from my closed office door. Beatrice’s transport sheet lies beside his phone. He is trying to coordinate one changed appointment between her nurse, driver, and relatives.
Beatrice’s nurse calls next. Gabriel leaves the medical decision to her and adjusts the transportation around it.
Celeste appears beside the table before he ends the call.
“Give me the relatives,” she says. “I know which ones need reassurance and which ones need to be ignored.”
Her voice is light, useful, practiced. The same performance in a different dress.
Gabriel closes one hand over the phone after the nurse disconnects. “No.”
“You are already behind.”
“Then I will stay behind until I finish.”
“I have handled family events with you for years.”
“You are a guest at this one. I am the family liaison.” He turns the transport sheet back toward himself. “I will handle it.”
Celeste looks at me as if I have arranged this humiliation for her.
I check the revised menu and give her nothing.
She leaves without taking a single name.
Gabriel’s search opens six years of calendars and event files, my initials buried beneath other people’s names.
One dinner branches into cars, allergies, flowers, and family reminders. A hotel program carries my vendor notes but not my name.
Gabriel opens the hotel program. My vendor notes sit beneath Helena’s welcome speech. The printed credit page does not contain my name.
“Your initials are on the work,” he says.
“Not on the program.”
He searches the folder for `IB`. The results keep filling the screen.
My phone rings.
The name on the screen belongs to a bride who paused a spring booking two days after the gala.
I take the call by the windows.
“This is Ivy Bennett.”
Her apology arrives wrapped in business language. Her family is still worried the Ashford scandal could disrupt her wedding.
“The Ashfords have no ownership or control here,” I say. “Your wedding would be handled by Seabriar alone. I can hold the date until Friday.”
She asks if Gabriel Ashford is involved in the property.
I look at Gabriel’s reflection in the glass.
He is standing exactly where I left him. Silent. His hands are flat on either side of the laptop.
“No,” I say. “He has no ownership or management role at Seabriar.”
The client promises to call Friday.
I end the call without begging for the booking and without pretending it did not matter.
Hours later, the windows are black with night.
Outside, wind pushes salt against the windows. Inside, the printer releases tomorrow’s production schedule with a mechanical sigh.
I return to the operations table and open the Seabriar reopening plan beneath the menu file.
Gabriel’s attention catches on the dates before I can turn the page.
The first is crossed out.
So is the second.
Beside the third, in my own handwriting, is one word.
Postponed.