Chapter 43 Mara
MARA
The binder is heavier than it looks. Cream leather, gold edges, tabs like little flags. I flip a page and pretend to read.
Silks. Florals. Venues with perfect light. Every photo looks like a life that belongs to someone else.
Duchess sprawls across my lap with the indifference of royalty, purring like a machine left running. My fingers move through her fur without thinking—slow strokes, same path, over and over. It’s something to do with my hands while women I love talk about a day that doesn’t feel like mine.
“We can do pale blush,” the planner chirps, tapping the spread. “Or ivory. Timeless. Here, Orlo’s side mentioned winter jasmine if the date lands in late February. We could weave it through the archway. See?”
Valentina leans in, ready with a practical nod. Alessia takes a sip of water and studies me over the rim of her glass like I’m a painting with a crack no one else can see.
“Jasmine’s strong,” I say because someone needs to have a word. “Overpowers everything if you’re not careful.”
The planner laughs lightly. “We’ll keep it balanced. There are also peonies. Classic romance. Or camellias, very old world.”
Old world. Control dressed like tradition.
The page gleams. A ribbon swatch sticks to my finger. I peel it off and set it on the table carefully, like it’s alive.
“What do you think of this lace?” Valentina asks, nudging the sample toward me. “Hand-stitched. It’s beautiful.”
“It is.”
“And the silhouette,” the planner continues. “We’re leaning toward a fit-and-flare, yes? Orlo’s mother suggested cathedral-length for the veil.”
Of course she did.
Duchess rolls to her back and stretches until her paws hit the edge of the binder. I scratch the soft curve of her stomach, and she makes a noise that sounds like surrender. My chest tightens for no good reason.
“I think…” I say, eyes on the lace. “I’m tired.”
It lands like a glass set down too gently. The planner’s smile pauses, then rearranges.
“Of course. We’ve done so much this week. We can stop here. I’ll leave the binder. Sleep on it. We’ll revisit tomorrow.”
She packs her swatches with neat hands. Valentina thanks her. Alessia rises to walk her out. Goodbyes are bright and careful. The door clicks; the suite exhales.
It’s just the three of us again. The light outside is soft and gray, New York doing its winter impression of a dimmer switch. I lift Duchess, and she oozes off my lap, affronted, then decides the chair beside me is good enough. Traitor.
“I’m going to lie down,” I say. “Headache.”
Valentina’s eyes crease. “You eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Water?”
I lift the glass and sip. “See?”
Alessia leaves her spot by the door and joins me at the table, fingers drumming once, then still. “Do you want company or real quiet?”
“Quiet.” It comes out smooth. Too smooth. “Please.”
They follow me anyway—down the hall, past the framed family photos someone insists make the place feel like home. Mine are stuck somewhere between storage and denial.
My room is colder than the rest of the apartment. The curtains are open. Buildings square off against the sky like they always win.
I toe off my slippers and sit on the edge of the bed.
The duvet is heavy; I don’t get under it.
Valentina shuts the door behind us, then opens it again, like she’s not sure if a boundary helps or hurts.
Alessia turns the dimmer down a notch and the room softens.
I look at the carpet. If I stare long enough, the pattern starts to move.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Really.”
“Okay,” Valentina says. No argument. Just the word. “We can sit then.”
She perches at the foot of the bed, angled toward the door, always ready to pivot.
Alessia takes the chair by the window and tucks one foot under herself.
Duchess slinks in and does a perimeter check before she decides the chair is still acceptable, leaps onto it, curls, and sighs.
Everyone settles like they were assigned seats at my performance and forgot the script.
“We can talk about anything else,” Alessia offers. “Or nothing. I can tell you about the woman who tried to cut the line at the gelato place by pretending to go into labor.”
Valentina’s mouth tips. “She did not.”
“Oh, she did. I offered her my car and she recovered miraculously.”
I almost smile. Almost.
“People are insane.”
“Yes,” Alessia says, grateful for the crack of light. “But entertaining.”
We sit in the small quiet that comes after a nearly-laugh. The city hums. A siren somewhere far enough away to ignore. A horn that gives up early. Heat ticks through the wall.
Valentina clears her throat. “You don’t have to pick anything today. You don’t have to pick anything at all until you want to.”
“I know.”
“We can slow this down,” she says, and there’s no performance in it. “Make it a series of small decisions that don’t feel like a cliff.”
“Or we can pick nothing and eat cake,” Alessia says. “I vote cake.”
“Cake is good,” I say.
Valentina waits a beat. “Are you sleeping?”
“Sometimes.”
“Nightmares?”
“Sometimes.”
She nods like I gave her a full medical history. Alessia watches me instead of the window. She’s always been better at the part where you see what someone won’t say.
“Tell me something boring,” I say. “Please.”
Valentina thinks. “I organized the spice drawer by cuisine.”
“Psychopath,” Alessia says. “Who does that?”
“Someone whose spouse put cinnamon in arrabbiata once.”
I let the corner of my mouth lift. “He didn’t.”
“Oh, he did,” Valentina says, hand to heart, affronted. “The betrayal.”
We stack small, safe stories between us like blocks a child won’t let fall. Twenty minutes pass. Maybe thirty. My shoulders drop half an inch. The air gets easier to breathe once it stops trying to be lovely.
From the table, my phone lights up. I don’t look. I don’t need to. If it’s who I want it to be…it wouldn’t be. If it’s who I expect, I don’t want it.
“Tomorrow, they’ll bring rings,” Valentina says carefully. “Just options. You can say no to every single one.”
“I probably will.”
“Good.”
Alessia tips her head. “Do you want to meet with the florist without Orlo’s mother there? I can make that happen.”
“Please.”
“Done.”
I pick at a loose thread on the duvet until it gives, then tuck the end under my nail like I didn’t break anything. I hear my mother in my head, soft and impossible to argue with.
The first choice you make is whether to make the choice at all.
I hate how right she still is.
“I’m not unhappy,” I finally say. “I’m just…not—”
“Here,” Alessia finishes.
“Yes.”
Silence settles again, kinder than before. Valentina stands and comes to me, brushing a palm over my hair once, a touch light enough I can pretend it didn’t happen.
“You don’t have to be brave right now,” she says. “You can just be tired.”
“I am.”
“Then be tired. We’ll check on you later.”
Alessia rises too. She doesn’t come closer. She points at the table instead.
“I took your phone and turned it face-down,” she says. “So if you make a choice to look, it’s yours. Not because it flashed.”
It’s such a small, stupid kindness that my throat tightens around it.
I nod. “Thank you.”
They head for the door, and Valentina pauses with her hand on the knob. “Do you want it closed?”
“Yes.”
She closes it. The latch catches. The room goes still.
I lie back without getting under the covers and stare at the ceiling. The lines cross each other in neat right angles like the pattern was designed to keep a mind from wandering.
It doesn’t work. The hum of the city threads through the walls. The radiator sighs. A voice in my head says cathedral veil, and another says run.
I don’t cry. Not because it wouldn’t help, but because my body has figured out the math. Crying takes water. Water takes strength. Strength is a currency I’m saving.
After a while, I drift. Not asleep, not awake, but somewhere in the middle where thoughts repeat until they lose their edges.
Footsteps pass in the hall. Voices murmur and fade. Duchess pads to the bed, climbs onto my stomach, kneads twice, and settles. Her weight is ridiculous for something so small. It pins me to the present.
There’s a knock. Soft. The kind someone uses when they don’t want to be heard knocking at all.
“Come in.”
Alessia cracks the door and slides a mug onto the dresser, keeping the line of the doorway with her body like she’s a bouncer at my own threshold.
“Chamomile,” she says. “You don’t have to drink it.”
“I know. The tea can stay. Thank you.”
She smiles without teeth. “We’ll be in the living room. If you want noise, come sit and pretend you’re listening.”
“Thank you.”
She nods once and disappears, door whispering shut behind her.
I sit up enough to reach the mug. It’s too hot, and I sip anyway.
The first burn reminds me I’m still living in a body that notices things.
Heat. Weight. The kind press of a cat. The way the air tastes like winter through a cracked window.
On the nightstand, the binder waits where they set it. Someone put a sticky note on it. Valentina’s handwriting, neat and practical.
No decisions tonight.
Another beneath it in Alessia’s loopy script.
Cake still an option.
I smile, small and private. Then I open the binder. Not to choose. To see how heavy it is when I hold it in my own hands.
The lace swatch slides out and hits my thigh. I pick it up. It’s soft and stubborn, edges raw where someone cut it down to something manageable. I press it between my fingers, and it stays warm the way fabric does when a person won’t let go.
My phone lights again, face-down, a square of glow against the table. It wants me to turn it over. I don’t.
Instead, I close the binder and shove it beneath the bed where I can’t see it. Duchess complains at the movement, paws flexing. I scratch between her ears until the sound in her chest smooths out again.
When I finally lie down and pull the duvet over both of us, the room goes dark enough that the city can’t find its way in. The quiet doesn’t feel like surrender. It feels like a room I locked from the inside.
There’s a future coming. People are building it for me in other rooms. Picking flowers. Measuring aisles. Scheduling fittings. I’ll meet it when I have to.
For now, I keep my hand on the cat and my eyes on the dark and let myself be the one thing I haven’t been allowed to be in weeks. At peace with everything. I’m so tired of fighting.