Chapter 5 #3
Celia handed me a cup. “The garden wall is being reinforced tomorrow,” she said. “You will hear drilling. I thought it was better you heard it from a person rather than waking to construction and assuming we had trapped you.”
The tea smelled of orange peel and something floral.
“I would probably assume that anyway,” I said.
“Reasonable.”
Damian’s mouth moved slightly. Not quite a smile. I caught it before he could hide it.
Celia sat in the chair opposite mine. “Do you have clients this week?”
“Three consultations and a site visit.”
“Will you continue working?” Damian asked.
I looked at him. “Did you think I would not?”
“I thought you might not want to.”
“What I want is to work in my office without an armed man parked outside it.”
“That is not possible this week.”
“Because you say so?”
“Because someone took a photograph of your door from inside the building.”
His tone remained calm. That made the words harder to dismiss.
Celia set down her cup. “What if your office came here for a few days?”
I almost laughed. “My office is clients, vendor calls, fabric samples, budgets, couples who want me to decide whether their grandmother can sit beside an ex-wife. It does not fit in a library.”
“It might not need to.” Celia’s gaze moved to the boxes. “What do you need most urgently?”
The question should not have made my throat close. People had spent two days telling me what I needed. Protection. A lawyer. A marriage. A car. A guarded house. No one had asked about the small practical things that made up the work I loved.
“My assistant needs a decision about a wedding at the Calder Hotel,” I said after a moment.
“The bride’s mother wants to change the ceremony entrance.
The florist says it will interfere with the light installation.
And I have to call an estate manager who thinks beige roses are a personality trait. ”
Celia nodded solemnly. “A crisis.”
“It is.”
“I believe you.”
Damian picked up the folder. “Bring Mia here. Use the library. Use whatever room you need. The Voss security team can sweep the Calder before you go there.”
I crossed my arms. “And if I say I do not want them to?”
“Then we talk about the risk.”
“That is not the same as saying yes.”
“No.” His eyes held mine. “It is not.”
The honesty was exhausting. It left no simple place to put my anger.
Mia arrived an hour later carrying three tote bags, a garment bag, and enough judgment to fill the entry hall.
She hugged me first. Hard. Then she stepped back and looked at Damian.
“I have seen the house,” she said. “It is very intimidating. Congratulations, I suppose.”
“Thank you,” Damian said.
“You are welcome. I am not actually congratulating you.”
“Noted.”
I watched him absorb that without irritation. Mia noticed too. Her eyes flicked toward me.
We spent the afternoon at the library table.
Mia opened her laptop, spread seating charts across the rug, and answered calls while I moved between the client files and the window.
Gradually, the room stopped feeling like a cage.
It became a war room for centerpieces, family logistics, and a weekend wedding that did not know it had become the most ordinary thing in my life.
At four, a couple joined us by video call.
They were both anxious, both speaking too quickly, and both convinced their relatives were going to ruin the day.
I listened. I asked questions. I told them the truth: their families would bring their histories into the room whether anyone wanted them to or not.
The goal was not to erase history. The goal was to decide what kind of memory they wanted to make in spite of it.
When the call ended, the library had gone very quiet.
Damian stood by the doorway, watching me.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
“You could have announced yourself.”
“You were working.”
Something about the way he said it made the word seem more serious than it was. Not wedding planning. Work. A thing with weight.
Mia gathered her things and glanced between us. “I am going to make the estate manager regret his entire color palette,” she said. “Elena, call me if you need anything. Anything.”
“I will.”
Once she had left, Damian came to the desk. He picked up a pale green silk swatch and turned it between his fingers.
“What is this for?”
“A ceremony runner.”
“It looks like fabric.”
“It is fabric.”
He nodded as though I had explained a national security policy.
“Do you like what you do?” he asked.
The question was so direct that I looked up.
“Yes,” I said. “Most days.”
“Why?”
I thought about it. “Because people come to me when they are about to make a promise and they do not know how to hold all the pieces at once. I make a plan. I solve the things that can be solved. And sometimes, when the doors open, they remember why they chose each other in the first place.”
Damian’s fingers stilled on the silk.
“That sounds dangerous,” he said.
“To whom?”
“To anyone who has forgotten why they chose something.”
The room seemed to narrow around us.
I could have asked what he meant. I did not. Perhaps I was beginning to understand that Damian gave truth in small, hard pieces, and that pushing too quickly only made him fold them back into himself.
Instead I reached for the swatch. Our hands touched.
It was nothing. Skin against skin. A second, maybe less.
He pulled away first.
The space he left behind felt enormous.
I stood very still.
Damian turned toward me. His face had returned to its familiar control, but there was strain beneath it.
"I am sorry," he said.
"For what part?"
"All of it."
I should have been satisfied. I was not.
"You are going to have to become more specific," I said.
His mouth shifted. "I am learning."
The words were so unexpected that a laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
His eyes came to my face. The house seemed too quiet. The space between us changed, only slightly.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
Congratulations on the marriage, Mrs. Voss.
Below it was a photograph.
My apartment door. Taken from inside the hallway.