Chapter 15
Lizanne
The bedroom was too quiet without Trina in it.
Lizanne had expected relief. Clean lines, reclaimed space, the decision made and done with.
What she hadn’t anticipated was standing in front of Trina’s side of the wardrobe at seven in the morning, feeling the silence settle into the room like it had always lived there and was only now making itself known.
She stripped the side table. She moved the spare reading lamp to the far end of the room where it would throw light on a face that didn’t exist in this space yet. She stood back and looked at the result and it looked precisely like what it was.
Pat had spoken to Rose already. Lizanne hadn’t asked her to, which meant Pat was running on instinct, which meant Pat was doing her job, which was the only reliable constant in Lizanne’s life at the moment.
The knock came at just past nine.
“Come in.”
Rose entered with a cardboard box and stopped just inside the door. She took in the room the way she took in every space.
“Pat said.” She paused. “She said I should make it more—” Another pause. “She used the word ours.”
“She would,” Lizanne said. “They’ll film in here, so it needs to…”
“Look like I live here. I know.”
Rose set the box on the bed and started unpacking. A small alarm clock. A water glass with a weighted base. A tube of hand cream. Then a book, large, dark-spined, the cover worn soft and the spine cracked in several places. Lizanne crossed the room before she’d decided to.
The Atlas of the Night Sky.
“My father’s,” Rose said, still unpacking. “He liked to know where things were. Even things you couldn’t touch.” She set a folded scarf on the bed. “I’ve read it enough times I could probably recite it. I still take it everywhere.”
Lizanne set it on the side table. Carefully, not casually.
Rose produced two photographs in plain frames and placed them beside the book.
The first was a man — dark-haired, mid-laugh in a garden.
Her father. Lizanne knew it without asking.
The second was Daisy, mid-run in what looked like a park, face turned toward the camera with the total unselfconsciousness of a child who hadn’t yet learned to perform for a lens.
“I want to be straightforward with you. I’m not good with children. I don’t have a natural register for them. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”
“I know,” Rose said. No edge to it, which Lizanne appreciated more than she expected to.
“Does she like the playroom? I wasn’t certain what she’d want.”
“So you got her everything?” Rose smiled. “She loves it, and she’ll want three more things by Friday.”
“Then she’ll have them.”
Rose set down the box. “Lizanne.”
“It’s not a problem—”
“I’m not going to let you parent my daughter. Or spoil her.” No heat in it, but no flexibility either. “I appreciate the playroom. But Daisy’s rules, her discipline, her decisions … that’s mine. It stays mine. That includes what toys she gets, from now on.”
Lizanne raised both hands. “All right.”
“I mean it.”
“I heard you.” She did. She wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with every edge of it, but she understood the line, and she had enough self-awareness to know she wasn’t equipped to parent anyone’s child. “All right,” she said again, quieter.
Rose held her gaze a moment, then nodded and went back to the box.
The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable, which surprised Lizanne slightly.
“The filming schedule,” Lizanne said. “Sit down, please. We need to go over it. They sent the schedule for after we’re married.”
Rose sat on the edge of the bed. Lizanne took the chair by the window.
“Three days a week,” Lizanne said. “Mornings from nine until one, two evenings a week until ten. Confessionals are scheduled separately. They give us days in advance, we give them our availability, Pat manages the conflicts.” She paused. “They are not here every day. I was clear about that.”
Rose’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “Three days and two nights? That’s more manageable than I expected.”
“I do occasionally negotiate effectively,” Lizanne said.
Something shifted in Rose’s face. Not quite a smile.
“Now, your dress,” Lizanne said.
“I’ll find something off the rack.”
“Rose.” Lizanne leaned forward slightly.
“We are getting married at Luna de Sangre. Which you chose, with considerable care and at considerable expense.” She kept her voice level.
“It’s going to be watched by a very large number of people, filmed in 4K.
I am not going to let you do that in a dress you grabbed off a rail because you decided the day didn’t warrant your attention.
” She stood up. “We’re going to get you a proper dress tonight. Seven o’clock.”
“Lizanne—”
“No room for negotiation on this one. Seven o’clock. Wear something you can change in and out of easily.”
***
At seven-fifteen, Lizanne was at the window in the entrance hall with her coat on and her bag on the console table and the car outside and no stylist, no assistant, no camera crew.
She’d made that decision herself after Rose left, standing in the bedroom with the astronomy book on the side table and no clear reason for it except that it had felt right.
She was starting to wonder if Rose was coming.
It wasn’t unreasonable to wonder. She’d pushed hard these last few days, and she knew it, and Rose had agreed the way people agree when they’ve exhausted their objections and the other person is still talking. That wasn’t the same as wanting to go.
At seven-nineteen she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Rose came down in a dark coat, hair back, and stopped at the bottom.
“Alright, let’s do this.”
They got in the car and pulled down the drive, past the camera van sitting outside the gate. Rose watched it through the window as they passed.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “It’s nearly seven-thirty. Everything’s closed.”
“If I want a bridal salon to stay open after hours, it stays open after hours.” Lizanne kept her eyes forward. “Being the lead of the number one show in the country has some practical uses.”
Rose was quiet for a moment, then turned back to the window.
The salon was on a street where the shops didn’t bother with signs because the people who needed them already knew where they were. Lights on inside, a woman in an ivory blazer at the door before they’d reached it.
“Miss Connors, we are so thrilled, this is going to be absolutely—” She took both of Rose’s hands without introducing herself. “And you must be the bride! You have the most wonderful frame. We are going to find you something extraordinary tonight, I just know—”
Rose held still through all of it.
Lizanne stepped between them. “Could you give us a moment?”
The attendant withdrew.
“Tell me what you want,” Lizanne said. “Not for the show. Not for the cameras. What you’d actually want if this were real.”
Rose was quiet for long enough that it stopped being a pause.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve done this for other people so many times and I genuinely don’t know.”
“All right.” Lizanne turned to the attendant. “Bring mine out.”
The attendant disappeared while Rose stood there motionless, and lost.
Lizanne crossed to her and took both her hands, and felt Rose go very still — not pulling away, just waiting to see what this was.
“This is not a real thing,” Lizanne said.
“Not in the way that counts. When your actual person comes along you can do all of this again properly, in whatever dress you want. Tonight is just—” She paused.
“A beautiful, expensive performance that ends with you solvent and free and standing on your own ground.” She held Rose’s hands steady.
“So let’s find you a dress that’s worth the performance. Nothing less than that.”
Rose looked at her. Whatever was moving behind her eyes, she didn’t put it into words.
Then she squeezed Lizanne’s hands.
Lizanne hadn’t expected it. She held on a beat longer than was strictly necessary and found, standing in the warm light of a closed bridal salon with the cameras nowhere near them, that she didn’t mind it at all.
Before she had a chance to examine whatever it was that filled this moment, the attendant returned with the garment bag containing her dress.
And suddenly, it was Lizanne’s turn to not be able to breathe quite properly.
Because the last time she’d seen this dress, she’d had a future planned out in front of her that hadn’t looked like anything she could recognize now.