Chapter 7 The Garden Door
The dining room has a full table when I walk past.
I didn't plan to stop. I'm already in my jacket, bag over one shoulder, running the morning in my head. First meeting at ten, the address already pulled up, the two points I want settled before anything else.
Moira's voice finds me before I clear the doorway.
"Leaving without breakfast? Where are you off to this early?"
I turn.
All four of them. My father and Moira on the left side of the table, Callum and Isabella across from them, close enough that their arms are nearly touching. Toast, eggs, a pot of something hot.
Callum glances up when Moira speaks. Then he looks back down and slides the toast he's already cut across to Isabella's side of the plate.
Isabella reaches up and kisses his jaw. "Thank you, my love." She takes a small, deliberate bite, and as she chews, she turns her head just slightly and lets her eyes find me. Not a stare. Barely a glance.
It says what it needs to say.
I look at them for a moment.
"A date," I say.
The knife in Callum's hand catches the edge of his plate. A small, clean sound — ting — in an otherwise quiet room.
Isabella glances at him. Callum sets the knife down and turns to her with an easy expression. "Staring that hard. Still not tired of looking?"
She makes a sound and drops her eyes to her plate, color rising in her face. "You're impossible."
I'm already turning toward the door.
"Rowan."
My father sets the paper down.
"Your mother and I have arranged a flat for you. It's being prepared — you can move in tomorrow." He picks up his coffee. "Your sister and her husband are mated now. Living on different floors of the same house isn't convenient."
Everyone at the table knows this for what it is. The manor walls are reinforced. Pack construction, built specifically to contain sound.
There is no practical inconvenience. What happened in the hallway last night is the inconvenience: Isabella saw it, and Isabella has been thinking about it since.
Isabella's color rises to her ears. "Dad." Her voice does the thing it does. "What are you saying to Rowan."
Moira gives her a look. "Having a pup is the priority for you two. With your sister upstairs, you as a couple can't properly relax." She sets her cup down. "This is the sensible arrangement."
"Mom, you too—" Isabella cuts it off with a small huff, and turns to look at me.
I nod. "Fine."
One word. No pause before it, none after.
The table goes quiet.
My father has the expression of a man whose prepared speech has arrived at its conclusion without being needed. Moira straightens almost imperceptibly. Isabella's look of triumph flickers. This was supposed to land somewhere, cost something, and it cost nothing at all.
Moira fills the silence. She reaches for her cup with both hands, something to do.
"It's a reasonable arrangement for you as well. You're not getting any younger, and with the marriage discussions underway, you'll need your own space. For whoever you end up with."
"You're getting married?"
Callum's voice drops into the middle of the table with no preamble and no softening. Just the words, out before anything could stop them.
Isabella sets her toast down.
I meet his eyes. There's no good answer, so I give him the shortest one.
"I suppose so." And underneath that, a thought I keep to myself: if this morning goes the way I'm hoping.
I shift my bag and walk to the garden door.
Behind me, Isabella's voice, careful and even.
"Cal. What are you looking at?"
I don't hear his answer.