Chapter Seven
Casey
GRETCHEN HOLLINGSFORD comes back from Tuscany on the third of October, and three days later, Sterling tells me we’ve been invited to dinner at the family house in Myers Park that night.
He says it casually, the same tone he uses for restaurant reservations, except that he’s straightening the mail on the counter while he says it, squaring the envelopes against the edge.
I’ve been married to this man for five months. His straightening means he’s nervous.
“Dinner at your mother’s?”
He nods. “It’s the family house. Technically, the trust owns most of it. The structure is complicated.”
“I don’t care about the trust structure, Sterling. I care that your mother has been back for three days and this is the first I’m hearing about dinner.” I’d expected to meet her and his sister well before now, but somehow, days became weeks became months, until here we are.
“She needed time to settle.”
“She needed time to prepare.”
He looks at me. I look at him. We both know I’m right, and neither of us says so, because Sterling doesn’t concede arguments he can’t win, and I don’t push arguments I’ve already won.
“It had to happen sometime,” I say with breezy confidence that’s mostly feigned.
“I’m married to you, not them, so worst case scenario is they don’t like me to start with. ”
He looks poised to say something but nods instead and pulls me into his arms for a deep kiss.
Fortunately, it’s my day off, so I don’t have to make excuses.
Part of me wishes the hospital would call me in for a shift, but I want to get it over with.
It’s better to forge through, like taking out a catheter in one quick, smooth motion instead of increments.
It hurts the patient more the longer you take.
I spend two hours shopping to find the right dress, which is an hour more than I spent on my wedding dress and twice as much as the occasion deserves.
I buy a dress, simple and dark, from a store I can afford, because I’m not about to show up to the Hollingsford estate in anything I can’t pay for myself.
I’m not going to be accused of marrying him for his money.
Sterling offers to buy me something, but I decline. He offers again. I decline again. He opens his mouth a third time, and I tell him that if he finishes that sentence, I’m going in scrubs, and he closes his mouth.
The house is enormous. I knew it would be, because Sterling showed me photographs once, early on when I asked.
The photographs didn’t prepare me. Myers Park money is old enough to have award-winning topiary, and the Hollingsford property has landscape that’s been flourishing since before I was born.
The driveway alone is longer than the street I grew up on in Hickory.
Sterling parks behind a silver sedan. He turns off the engine and sits there longer than he usually sits anywhere. He adjusts his cuff and checks his appearance in the mirror. These aren’t things he does.
“Sterling?”
“Hmm.”
“Is there anything I should know before we go in?” My stomach clenches again with dread.
He hesitates. “My mother is...formal. Brittany will be quiet. The food will be excellent.”
I shoot him a look. “That’s not what I asked.”
He looks at me, and his expression suggests he’s choosing between honesty and efficiency. “My mother has firm beliefs. She expresses them through implication rather than statement. She won’t say anything you can argue with directly.”
“So she’s going to be awful, but politely.” I draw in a deep breath, recalling my sophomore-year roommate, who elevated passive-aggressive to an art form. It was good training for this, or so I tell myself.
“She’s going to be herself.” He sounds nervous but is trying to reassure me.
I manage a smile that’s only a little wobbly. “That’s what I said.”
He almost smiles back. I take it as a warning because he normally smiles whenever I do.
Gretchen meets us in the foyer. She’s silver-blond, probably discreetly tinted at the salon, and the style is cut precisely at the jaw.
She’s thin, probably through effort rather than nature, and dressed in an expensive fabric that doesn’t announce itself.
She’s beautiful, polished, and elegant, like a museum.
Cool and designed to impress, but not to somewhere you’d want to live.
“Sterling.” She kisses her son’s cheek. “And this must be Casey.”
She says my name in a tone I’ve heard before, from patients’ family members who don’t think the nurse is qualified to be in the room. It’s warm and ostensibly welcoming but has absolutely no sincerity behind it.
“It’s so lovely to finally meet you. Sterling has told us almost nothing, which I suppose is his way of keeping you to himself.
” She’s looking at Sterling while she says this.
Not at me. I’m standing right there, and she’s discussing me like an object, so smoothly that correcting her would make me the one who’s awkward.
I make her warm, polite, insincere tone. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Hollingsford.”
“Gretchen, please. Mrs. Hollingsford makes me feel ancient, and I’m already dreading the birthday.
” She touches my arm. The touch is brief, calibrated, and communicates nothing except that she knows how to touch a person’s arm and make it look like a gesture of welcome when it isn’t. “Come in. I hope you like lamb.”
She doesn’t ask whether I like lamb before telling me she hopes I do, which is a small thing that adds up.
Brittany is in the dining room. She’s blonder than her mother, softer-featured, wearing a necklace too heavy for the neckline, and a color that washes her out. She stands when we come in, shakes my hand, and says congratulations as though she’s reading it off a card somebody else wrote.
“Thank you,” I say. “It’s good to meet you.”
“You too.” She sits back down too quickly, and I catch her looking at her mother before she looks at me, checking for a signal I can’t read. Permission, maybe. Or instruction.
The dining room seats twelve. There are four of us.
Gretchen has placed me across from Sterling rather than beside him, which means I can’t touch him under the table or catch his eye without making it obvious.
The table is set with china that predates my parents’ marriage and flatware heavy enough to feel like a statement.
I grew up eating off mismatched plates my mother bought at yard sales, and every fork in this room knows it.
The campaign begins between the soup and the salad.
“Sterling, did you ever hear back from the Cormant girl? Emily?” Gretchen sets down her spoon rigidly. “Her mother told me she’d asked after you. I think she was disappointed to hear you’d married, though of course she’s thrilled for you.”
Sterling doesn’t take the bait. “I haven’t spoken to Emily Cormant in two years, Mother.”
“No, of course not. I only mention it because her mother and I are close. These things come up. You know how Gayle is.” She turns to me. “Casey, I should apologize. Sterling tells me you’re from Hickory? I don’t know it well, but I’m sure it’s charming.”
“It’s small,” I say. “Good people. Not much lamb.”
Gretchen’s smile doesn’t change. She absorbs the joke without changing expression and moves on. “Is your mother enjoying the marriage? I imagine a courthouse wedding must have been hard for her. Mothers do like to be involved.”
Here come the claws. I don’t let my tone or expression change. “My mother passed away when I was twenty-three.”
“Oh.” Gretchen’s hand goes to her chest. “Oh, how terrible. I’m so sorry.
Sterling didn’t mention it, but of course, he wouldn’t.
He’s always been so private.” She looks at her son with gentle reproach, as though his failure to disclose my dead mother is a social error on par with a missing place card. “I’m so terribly sorry, Casey.”
The apology is worse than the question. The apology has a shape to it, a performance of regret that exists for the table and not for me.
Underneath it’s the message she actually delivered.
Sterling didn’t tell his mother anything about me.
Not even the basic facts. Gretchen wants me to know that, and she wants to watch me absorb it.
I don’t give her the satisfaction. “Thank you. She’d have liked the soup.”
Brittany looks at me. Then she looks away.
She’s been doing this all evening, glancing at me in quick, furtive movements, as though looking directly at me for more than a second is something she isn’t allowed to do.
I don’t know what it means yet, but I’ll have to learn their cues to survive.
It’s like swimming in a pool of sharks wearing a salami suit.
Over the main course, Gretchen turns her attention to my work. “Tell me about your shifts, Casey. Sterling says you work nights?”
“Rotating. Three twelve-hour shifts a week, mostly nights.”
“That must be exhausting. The drive alone from Charlotte to the hospital, and then twelve hours on your feet.” She touches her wine glass. “I don’t know how you manage it.”
“I manage it the same way anyone manages a job. I show up and do it.”
“Of course you do. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.
” She smiles. The warmth in it is perfect, calibrated, and it makes my answer sound small even though it wasn’t.
“It’s just that Sterling’s schedule is so demanding.
I worry about you two finding time together when you’re both running in opposite directions. ”
She frames every question with sympathy that a stranger would mistake for concern. Each one lands in the same place: Your life is hard, your world is small, and you’ve married into something you can’t keep up with.
“Nursing is wonderful work,” Gretchen says. “So important. I’ve always admired nurses. The dedication.” She says dedication and means hobby.