Chapter 322

[ 1,139 words ]

Delia’s POV

The invitation arrived on my phone while I was sitting across from my mother in her sunroom, the porcelain teacup balanced on its saucer the way she insisted it always be balanced, handle facing exactly the same direction as the spoon.

I read it twice before I said anything.

“Katia is inviting everyone to dinner,” I said, setting my phone face down on the table beside my own untouched tea. “Tonight. Her penthouse p>

“Oh?” Mama said, not looking up from whatever she was doing to her own cup, stirring sugar she did not need into tea she had been drinking the same way for thirty years.

“I wonder why she wants us all there,” I said. “Whether she just wants to flaunt the fact that she has more money than me. Show off the view, the floors, whatever new piece of art she’s bought since the last time any of us were allowed inside p>

Martha laughed, a small, dismissive sound that landed harder than she probably meant it to, or perhaps exactly as hard as she meant it to. With my mother it was always difficult to tell which.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Why on earth would you be jealous of a penthouse, Delia? Julian’s mansion is bigger than her entire building put together. You live in more square footage than the woman has ever seen in her life p>

I did not point out that square footage was not actually the thing I had been talking about, because my mother heard what she wanted to hear and rearranged conversations to fit whatever shape suited her best, and I had learned a long time ago that correcting her rarely ended in my favor.

“I am just looking forward to seeing Jude,” she continued, lifting her cup, her pinky extended in the way she had practiced since before I was born. “I know he will have goodies for me. That son-in-law of mine sure knows how to treat his in-laws p>

Something in my chest tightened, small and familiar, the same tightness I had been carrying around since the dinner at this very house, since the boxes, and since the watch and the necklace and the ring that never quite made it onto Katia’s left hand for reasons nobody had bothered explaining to me.

“Talking about son-in-law,” Mama said, setting her cup down with a small, precise click against the saucer, her eyes sliding over to me with an expression I recognized immediately, the one she wore right before she said something designed to look like concern while doing something else entirely. “Why is it that Julian has never bought you gifts? Or us. Your own family, Delia. Is he even giving you money to take care of yourself properly p>

“Mother p>

“I am simply asking,” she said, brushing her hair back from her face with one hand, the gesture she always made when she wanted to look as though she had just thought of something rather than having clearly planned it in advance. “Don’t tell me your bank statement doesn’t know your own husband’s name. Aren’t you supposed to have estates in your name? Properties. The kind of thing a Windsor wife is meant to have, the kind of security a woman in your position should never have to ask for twice p>

I felt my face heat, the kind of heat that had nothing to do with the tea steaming in front of me and everything to do with how precisely she had aimed that sentence and how she had managed to make my own marriage sound like a failing I had personally allowed to happen to me rather than something that had simply existed the way it existed.

“I mean,” Mama went on, clearly enjoying herself now, the way she always enjoyed herself most when she had found a thread worth pulling, “Jude isn’t even richer than Julian. Everyone knows that. And yet Jude spoils Katia absolutely rotten. Necklaces. Rings. Crystal decanters for your father, for heaven’s sake. While your own husband will look you dead in the eye and tell you, with a perfectly straight face, that he has no gifts at all. None. As though that is simply an acceptable answer to give in front of your entire family p>

“Julian spoils me,” I said, the words coming out faster and sharper than I intended, a reflex more than a defense, the kind of sentence I had said so many times by now that it barely required thought anymore. “He simply does it differently than Jude does p>

“Differently,” Mama repeated, the word sitting in her mouth like something she was deciding whether to swallow or spit back out. “Yes. I suppose nothing at all is a kind of different p>

I did not answer that, because there was no answer that would not simply hand her another opening, and I had spent enough years across this exact table learning the precise shape of her openings to know better than to offer one voluntarily.

“Mother,” I said instead, reaching for my tea and finally taking a sip, mostly to give my hands something to do that was not clenching into fists in my lap, “I would rather not spend the morning discussing my marriage like it’s one of your charity luncheon topics p>

Mama studied me for a moment, the way she always studied people right before deciding whether to push further or let the subject rest, the calculation behind her eyes never quite hidden as well as she believed it to be.

“Fine,” she said, relenting, though something in her expression told me this was only a pause and not a retreat. “We’ll discuss the dinner instead. What does one wear to a penthouse one has never been invited into before tonight p>

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve genuinely never seen the inside of it that much p>

“Neither have I,” Mama said, and for a moment something almost wistful crossed her face, gone again before I could decide whether it had been real. “Strange, isn’t it? Our own daughter, building an entire life two sisters deep into the same city, and neither of us has ever once been invited up p>

I did not say what I was thinking, which was that there were a great many things about Katia’s life over the past several years that none of us had been invited into and that perhaps that fact alone should have told us something long before any of this began.

“Mother,” I said, changing the subject entirely because I did not trust where the previous one was heading, “Julian does spoil me. In his own way. I just.” I stopped, searching for words that would not sound as hollow leaving my mouth as they felt sitting in my chest. “I am just wondering what to expect at that dinner tonight p>

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