17. Maren
MAREN
Ido not sleep.
I sit at the small writing desk in my room from one to five in the morning with the lamp on the lowest setting and a yellow legal pad I stole from the library, and I do what I should have done eleven days ago, which is build a timeline.
I put the pen down. I look at the page.
I look at September 4.
The thing about September 4 is that it is a Wednesday.
I worked that Wednesday — I have my schedule on my phone, and I scroll back, and there it is, eleven hours on shift, three to two, and I remember it because it was the day Mrs. Whitmore in 612 demanded a different pillow at midnight.
The thing I do not remember about September 4 is anything else.
There was no rumor that day. There was no whisper at the front desk.
The pastry chef did not, on September 4, congratulate anyone on anything.
The rumor at the pastry station was Tuesday, September 13.
Henri said so himself when Livian pulled it out of him on Wednesday morning.
The rumor landed nine days after Cassian wrote Maren refs implied in his office, in his own script.
I write that on the legal pad. Underlined.
Rumor at pastry: Sept 13. "Maren refs implied" in CR's hand: Sept 4. Difference: 9 days.
I sit with the page.
There are, I tell myself, three explanations.
One: the Maren on Cassian's September 4 page is a different Maren. There is, theoretically, a different Maren in the building. There is not a different Maren in the building, but the world contains, theoretically, a different Maren. I write unlikely next to this one and underline it twice.
Two: Maren refs implied did not refer to me on September 4 — it referred to a category of person, a placeholder fiancée, a hypothetical anyone, and the page only matched up to me retroactively, after I named him at the chef's table.
This is the explanation that flatters him.
This is the explanation I would have believed two days ago.
Three: Cassian, on September 4, knew which Maren he meant.
I do not write the third option. I do not need to. It is the option that keeps me at the desk until five in the morning with my legal pad and a cold cup of tea and the small flat ache under my breastbone that I do not have a word for, currently, and do not particularly want one.
Owen finds me in the library at six.
I am in the wing chair by the south window with a book open in my lap that I am not reading. I have, evidently, been crying, although I had not registered it as crying until he comes in, sees my face, and does not say anything.
He closes the door. He sits down in the chair opposite mine. He folds his hands in his lap the way he folds his hands when he is, professionally, about to be useful.
"Mar."
"Hi."
"How long have you been up?"
"Awhile."
"Mm."
He does not push. He sits with me until the small clock on the mantel ticks over to six fifteen, and he says, eventually, "I have been doing some reading."
"Owen."
"Just — let me. I have been doing some reading. I would not have, if you had not — Maren, you have been pulling away from him since yesterday lunch and I am not, I will admit it, used to seeing my sister pull away from anything, and so I — I made some calls."
"You made them before yesterday lunch, Owen. I know you did."
He does not lie. I appreciate that.
"I made the first call on Tuesday. Yes."
"Why."
"Because something at the dinner Sunday night did not, to me, scan."
"What."
“You. He kissed you on a beach in front of half a dozen witnesses. Fine. His part made sense. Yours didn’t. You don’t kiss a man you’ve known for four weeks with that kind of familiarity, and you definitely don’t do it in front of Mom. The math was wrong.”
"You thought we were — what. Faking it."
"I thought it was new. I thought it was newer than you were saying. I thought there was, somewhere, a reason you were holding the line of engaged this hard at this stage."
"Mm."
"Then the dinner — the Vance dinner. You hosted an investor dinner, Maren.
You. The person who, last Christmas, refused to read grace at our table because she didn't like speaking in front of people.
You hosted a dinner with a sixty-eight-year-old man who runs a fund, and you did it like you'd been doing it for ten years, and Mom thought it was love and I — I thought it was coaching. "
"Owen."
"Let me finish. I called a contact at Whitcomb.
Tuesday. Quietly. I asked about the resort's recent activity.
I asked, mostly, about timing. The Vance group went dark on three competitors of his this year.
Three. They are conservative, and they got more conservative this spring after his second-wife press. "
"I know."
"You know?"
"I know about the press. He told me."
"Did he tell you the term sheet was going to come back differently if there was a — quote — settled image?"
"Owen."
"He told you that."
"He told me. In his office. On September 7."
"That was the day he put the ring on you."
"Yes."
Owen stays perfectly still until I can hear, faintly from down the corridor, the small sound of the staff opening the breakfast room.
"Maren."
"I know."
"He told you, to your face, that an engagement would help him close his deal."
"He told me the deal would benefit. He did not tell me he was already implying it on September 4."
"What."
"I — Owen. I will tell you, but you cannot — you cannot do anything with it. Not yet. Promise me."
"Mar."
"Promise me, Owen."
"All right."
"He has a folder. In his office. I — I went in. Yesterday, while he was on a tour. The folder has dates. The date September 4 has a note in it. Maren refs implied. In his handwriting. Maren — by name, Owen. By name. Two days before our family dinner. Two days before I named him to Mom."
Owen has gone very still.
"Maren."
"I know what it looks like."
"It looks like you didn't name him at all. It looks like he — suggested it, somewhere, before you did. It looks like the rumor at the resort wasn't your sister's friend. It looks like it was staff."
"Owen."
"Mar."
"Don't. Just — don't say it. I haven't — I don't want to say it yet. I want to be sure."
"How sure do you need to be."
"Surer than I am."
He looks at me with the same expression he had the year I broke my wrist falling off the porch railing at fourteen—like he’s fighting the urge to step back into the older-brother role he’s reclaimed over the last twelve days.
"Mar. Listen to me. Carefully."
"Mm."
"If he tells you the truth in the next twenty-four hours, on his own — I will, with my whole chest, give him the benefit of the doubt.
I will. I will be the first person in this house to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But if he does not, if he sits at this table tonight and pours your wine and lets you keep that ring on your hand without saying a word about September 4 — Maren, you will not be the woman who kept that ring on. You hear me. You will not."
"Okay."
"Okay."
He stands. He puts his hand, briefly, on the top of my head — the way our father used to, the way no one in our family has done in fifteen years — and then he leaves the library, and I sit in the wing chair with my book and I don’t cry.
At lunch, Cassian pours my water before I lift my glass. I do not flinch. I sip. I smile at my mother. I laugh at something Sienna says about the centerpiece. I let his hand find my knee under the table, and I do not, this time, cross my legs away from him. I let the hand stay.
My mother's eyes, at the other end of the table, are bright.
I look at Cassian. He is talking to my father about, of all things, sailing.
His mouth, when it makes the word Friday, does the small crooked thing it does when he is, himself, lying about an appointment.
His thumb, on my knee, is doing the small unconscious sweep his thumb does when he is touching me without his attention.
I rest my hand over his on my knee, give a light press, and leave it there.
He looks at me like a man who believes he’s gotten something back.
I smile—one of the four hundred I’ve given in three years—and he doesn’t recognize it for what it is.
I do. Eight hours stand between now and when he comes to my door, and I plan to use every one.