PART 5:

Not the performed smile from before, but a real one. She doesn’t bring people places, she said to Ethan, like Victoria wasn’t standing right there. She hasn’t brought anyone anywhere in. Lily, Victoria said, and this time there was an edge on it. I’m giving him context, Lily said unbothered. It matters. He should know it matters.

She looked back at Ethan. It matters, she repeated simply. I know, Ethan said. Lily looked at him a moment longer. Then she reached out and touched Victoria’s arm briefly. Mom’s by the window. She knows you’re here. A pause. She looks like she’s being very composed about it. Victoria’s chin lifted slightly. Of course she does. She’s not. She’s trying, Vic.

She wants tonight to be good. I know she does, Victoria said. And the way she said it told Ethan that wanting it to be good and making it good were, in her mother’s case, two things that had historically diverged. Lily squeezed her arm and then released it and said she’d find them later and moved back off into the crowd.

Victoria watched her go with an expression that was too layered to read in one pass. “She seems good,” Ethan said carefully. “She’s always been the easier one of us to be around. It wasn’t cruel, just matter of fact. She doesn’t carry things the way I do. I think that used to bother me. Now I mostly just appreciate it. They moved further into the room.

A waiter appeared with champagne and Ethan took two glasses and handed one to Victoria and she drank from it like she was reminding herself to. Across the ballroom near a bank of windows that looked out over the city at night, a woman stood with a small group and held her champagne flute at a slight angle. The kind of angle that said the glass was present and not being touched.

She was tall and dressed in deep green, and her hair was silverthreaded dark, and she watched Victoria walk across the room with an expression that was composed and complicated, and had been that way for, Ethan suspected, a very long time. Victoria’s mother, she didn’t look hostile. She looked watchful, like someone waiting to see which version of the conversation was going to happen.

“Ready,” Victoria said under her breath. “You go first,” he said. I’m right behind you. She walked across the room and Ethan followed and the woman’s eyes moved to him immediately, did their assessment, and returned to her daughter. Victoria. She leaned in and touched cheeks with the precision of someone for whom physical affection was also a learned behavior which told Ethan a few things about where Victoria had gotten it.

You look, she looked at the dress. That’s new. It is. Her mother’s eyes moved to Ethan again directly this time without pretending they hadn’t been doing it already. And you’ve brought someone. Mom, this is Ethan Mercer. Ethan, my mother, Catherine Sinclair. Mrs. Sinclair. He extended his hand. She took it firm, brief appraising. Mercer, she repeated like she was checking a file.

What do you do, Ethan? Beside him, he felt Victoria go very slightly still. I’m a master electrician, he said. I run my own business. A small pause. Nothing dramatic. She was too practiced for that. How interesting, she said in the tone people use when they mean something that doesn’t translate neatly to interesting.

It pays well, and I’m good at it, he said pleasantly. That’s usually the best combination. Another pause. Something shifted slightly in Catherine Sinclair’s expression. Not warmth exactly, but the faint mark of someone who had expected deflection and gotten directness instead. Have you been in the city long? She asked. About 8 years. I moved from Cincinnati.

Victoria’s always been a city person, her mother said. And then, without quite, glanced across the room in the direction that Ethan hadn’t looked yet. He looked now. Marcus was maybe 30 ft away. He was speaking to a man who was presumably the groom, Lily’s fianceé, Jake, which Ethan had learned from the name cards near the entrance.

He stood with an ease that you either had naturally or worked very hard to manufacture. And from this distance, Ethan couldn’t tell which. He was good-looking in exactly the way Victoria had described, which had the strange effect of making him feel to Ethan slightly less like a real person and more like a confirmed report.

Marcus hadn’t looked over. He was listening to Jake with his full attention, laughing at something, hand at ease in his pocket. He’s always been very fond of family gatherings, Catherine said softly. She was still looking at Marcus. The observation had a warmth in it that wasn’t performing. Mom, Victoria started.

I’m simply noting, Catherine said, that he came for Lily. He came because Jake invited him and he never misses an opportunity to be in a room where people like him. Victoria said the precision in her voice was controlled but just barely. That’s different from doing it for Lily. Catherine looked at her daughter and something passed between them that Ethan had no history for.

Old and dense and full of conversations that had happened and not happened for years. Perhaps, Catherine said finally. She looked back at Ethan. Will you excuse me? I want to find Lily’s aunt before dinner. She nodded at him, the same composed, careful nod. It was nice to meet you, Ethan. She moved away, and Victoria stared at the middle distance and said nothing for a moment.

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