11. Nichole
— ? —
Nichole
The charity event is held on the lawn of a house that has a name instead of an address.
Thornhaven. I heard someone say it as we pulled up the drive, casually, like everyone knows that houses can be called things. As if a hundred-year-old mansion perched above the Atlantic is just a conversation piece, a landmark, a place you mention when giving directions to your yacht.
Tents bloom across the manicured grass like white flowers. Hydrangeas line the paths in shades of blue that match the water beyond. A string quartet plays something classical and inoffensive near the rose garden, and everywhere - everywhere - there are people.
Hundreds of them, according to the invitation. People who have known each other since birth, who summer in the same places and winter in the same places and marry each other’s children in an endless loop of money meeting money. And every one of them is looking at me.
I feel their eyes like heat.
“Don’t explain yourself,” Callum says, low, his mouth near my hair as he guides me through the crowd. His hand is at the small of my back, light, proprietary, exactly where a husband’s hand should be. “The moment you explain yourself, you’ve lost. They can smell it.”
“Smell what?”
“Apology. Uncertainty. Anything they can use.”
A woman in pale pink passes us, her gaze sweeping over my dress - the white one, the brave one - and then away, dismissing me in the space of a heartbeat.
“And if they ask where I’m from?” I keep my voice even, my smile fixed. “What I did before?”
“Tell them the truth and don’t apologize for it.” His hand presses slightly at my back, steering me around a cluster of men in identical blazers. “It’ll terrify them.”
“The truth terrifies people?”
“The truth without shame does. They don’t know what to do with it.”
We move through the party like we belong there, and the terrible thing is that we’re good at this.
His hand at my back. The way he leans down to hear me when I speak.
The way I laugh at something he says - and it isn’t even acting, not entirely, and I catch myself mid-laugh and the sound dies in my throat.
Across the lawn, Adelaide watches us.
She’s holding court near the rose garden, surrounded by women in her exact mold - silver-haired, sharp-eyed, draped in jewelry that could pay for a hospital wing. She’s not looking directly at us. She’s too skilled for that. But I feel her attention like a cold spot in a warm room.
“She’s still looking,” I murmur.
“She’s always looking.” Callum takes two glasses of champagne from a passing tray, hands me one. “That’s what she does. She watches until she finds the flaw, and then she presses.”
“So what do we do?”
“We don’t give her a flaw.”
He turns me by the elbow, pivoting us so that we’re facing each other instead of the crowd. His free hand comes up - slowly, deliberately, giving me time to object - and his thumb traces along my jaw, like he’s fixing something that isn’t there.
It is entirely for show.
It goes through me like a current.
My mouth goes dry. My pulse does something it shouldn’t. I have to look at his collar because I cannot look at his face, because if I look at his face I’m going to do something stupid like lean into the touch, like close my eyes, like forget that this is a performance.
He notices.
I watch him notice.
Neither of us moves for one second too long.
“Better,” he says, and his voice has a rough edge that wasn’t there before. “She’ll see that.”
“That’s why you did it? So she’d see?”
The pause before he answers is a fraction too long. “Why else?”
A woman appears at his elbow before I can respond - older, elegant, wearing pearls that probably have a provenance. “Callum, darling. I haven’t seen you at one of these in ages. And this must be the wife everyone’s talking about.”
“Mrs. Ashworth.” Callum’s mask slides smoothly into place. “This is Nichole. Nichole, Eleanor Ashworth. She and my mother have been conspiring together since before I was born.”
“Conspiring is such an ugly word.” Eleanor’s smile reveals nothing. “We prefer coordinating. Tell me, dear, how are you finding Newport?”
“Wet,” I say. “And very well-dressed.”
Eleanor laughs - a real laugh, surprised out of her. “Oh, I like this one. Adelaide said you were-” She stops herself. “Well. Adelaide says a lot of things.”
“I’m sure she does.”
We exchange pleasantries for another minute, and then Eleanor drifts away, and we’re alone again in a crowd of people who are all pretending not to watch us.
“You’re good at this,” Callum says.
“I’m good at surviving. It’s the same skill set.”
“It’s not, actually.” He’s looking at me with something I can’t read. “Surviving is about getting through. This is about making them think you belong. Those aren’t the same thing.”
“Aren’t they?”
Before he can answer, a new voice cuts in - younger, sweeter, laced with something that might be poison.
“Callum.”
I turn.
She’s blonde. Perfect. Radiant with the particular glow of a woman who has never once worried about money, or appearances, or whether she belongs in a room. Her dress is champagne-colored and fits like it was sewn onto her body, and she’s looking at Callum like I’m not standing there at all.
“Genevieve.” Callum’s voice has gone careful. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Mother’s on the committee. You know how it is.” Genevieve finally deigns to notice me, her eyes moving over my white dress with the expression of someone examining a stain. “And this must be… I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Nichole.” I offer my hand. “His wife.”
“Yes.” She takes my hand, holds it a moment too long. “I heard about that. Quite the surprise. Callum’s never been impulsive before.”
“Maybe he just never had the right reason.”
Something flickers in her perfect face. “Maybe.”
Adelaide has appeared at her shoulder - of course she has. This is choreographed. This whole thing is choreographed, and I walked right into it.
“Callum, darling.” Adelaide’s smile could cut glass. “You remember Genevieve.”
“Of course I remember.”
“We were engaged, once.” Genevieve says it to me, but her eyes are on Callum. “Practically.”
The word lands like a blade.
I keep my face perfectly still. I’ve had practice. I’ve had a lifetime of practice at not letting people see when they’ve landed a hit.
“Practically engaged,” I repeat. “Is that like practically pregnant? Either you are or you aren’t.”
Callum makes a sound that might be a cough.
Genevieve’s smile freezes.
“Well,” Adelaide says, smooth as silk, “we should let you get back to circulating. So many people to meet. So many questions to answer.” She takes Genevieve’s arm, steering her away. “Lovely to see you both.”
They retreat across the lawn, two blonde heads tilted together, already talking.
“Practically engaged?” I ask.
“It was my mother’s idea. Fifteen years ago.” Callum drains his champagne. “Genevieve and I had three dates. She laughed at her own jokes and asked me how much I expected to inherit. There was no engagement, practical or otherwise.”
“But she thinks there was.”
“She thinks a lot of things. My mother encourages it.”
I watch them across the lawn - Adelaide introducing Genevieve to a cluster of people, gesturing back toward us. Whatever she’s saying makes them look our way with expressions I can’t read.
“Your mother wants me gone,” I say.
“My mother wants control. It’s not the same thing.” He takes my empty glass, sets both on a passing tray. “She doesn’t care about you specifically. She cares that you’re a variable she didn’t plan for.”
“And Genevieve is a variable she did plan for.”
“Genevieve is a solution to a problem my mother thinks she understands.” He looks at me. “She doesn’t understand the problem. She never has.”
I want to ask what that means. I want to ask about the three dates, about the fifteen years, about the way he said she doesn’t understand like there’s a whole history behind it that I’ll never be told.
But his hand is at my back again, warm through the white fabric, and people are watching, and we have a performance to maintain.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s give them something to talk about.”
We circulate. We smile. We play the part of newlyweds so well that I start to forget it’s a part.
The sun is setting by the time we finally escape - leaving through a side gate, avoiding the last clusters of lingering guests, walking through the gathering dark toward the car. My feet ache in the shoes that match the dress. My face aches from smiling.
“You survived,” Callum says.
“Was there any doubt?”
“No.” He opens the car door for me. “There wasn’t.”
I slide in. He follows. The door closes, and we’re sealed in the dark, and for a moment neither of us speaks.
“Callum.”
“Yes.”
“The thing you did. On the lawn. With your-” I gesture vaguely at my jaw, at the place his thumb traced. “That was for show?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. The car hasn’t started moving yet. We’re just sitting here in the dark, the party glittering through the windows behind us.
“Yes,” he says finally. “It was for show.”
I nod. I don’t know why I asked. I don’t know what I wanted him to say.
“Good,” I say. “Just checking.”
The car begins to move.
Neither of us speaks again until we’re home.