The Winters(61)

“We’re not reopening the greenhouse,” Max told him. “This is just for a special occasion.”

I didn’t press the issue. I began to realize I could get my way in increments, not great leaps. Once the wedding guests gushed about how beautiful it was in there, how lucky we were to have this space, there was no way Max could lock it back up again.

One day, after the workers had cleared out for a break, Dani walked in on me standing alone in the center of the glass expanse, counting my blessings, which now included her.

“Why do rooms feel so much smaller when they’re empty?” she asked, looking around. “It’s weird.”

We both stood bathing in the noonday sun, amplified through the dusty glass. I understood then what really drew me here. It was the way the heat, tropical and familiar, traveled through my skin and into my bones, warming up my joints and deeply relaxing me. It was the only place at Asherley where I was never cold, where it felt, to me, like home.

“Thank you, Dani.”

“For what?”

“For knowing how much it means to me to have the wedding in here.”

She shrugged. “I wanted to be in here, too. Plus I like pissing him off.”

“He’s not angry. He just needed a little prodding.”

She walked over to the highest wall and tented her fingers on the glass. She looked to her left, took a few steps until she landed on a particular spot and looked over at the door. “Ever think you remember something that you thought was from a dream, but it might have been real?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

She took a few steps to the right, murmuring to invisible actors on an imaginary stage. She seemed to have entered the same fugue state she was in when she told me what she remembered about Rebekah’s last night in the greenhouse, and the other woman, a story I once resented, but now cherished, because I knew the truth, and it grounded me. It tied me to Asherley and to Max in a profoundly new way.

Just then Louisa walked in, wearing chic overalls and carrying a takeout coffee.

“Katya makes an excellent pot,” I said.

“And it shouldn’t be wasted on me when this swill will do,” she replied. “So, where are we thinking for the head table?”

“Right . . . over here,” I said, walking to where Dani was standing by the high spire. “After the ceremony, the chairs will be moved over to the round tables for the reception.”

Louisa became wistful. “There used to be rosebushes up to the ceiling here. God-awful color but such long stems, heads as big as apples.”

Dani, her head now down in her phone, excused herself.

“She all right?” Louisa asked.

“I think so.” She did seem off. But she also had a lot to keep on top of these past busy days.

Louisa was still looking around. “You know, maybe I’ve been a bit too hard on this place. It really is something.”

Max came in to say goodbye before heading to the office. He glanced about with a stern eye, noting what had been done, what still needed to be done. It was heartening, his interest in the wedding planning.

“It looks different with all that junk cleared out. Have you seen Dani? Adele’s here.”

“She just left,” I said.

“I keep missing her.”

Louisa asked him what he was wearing to the wedding, something I hadn’t thought to ask myself.

“Not a monkey suit this time, thank Christ. I will wear shorts and a baseball cap if I feel like it. And thankfully I’m marrying someone who wouldn’t give a damn.” He turned to me. “Sweetheart, I have a late dinner in New York, so I might crash there.”

“That’s all right,” I said, trying to sound more disappointed than angry. I knew I was marrying a busy politician, but this would be the third time in two weeks he’d spent the night in New York instead of coming home late. Albany I understood; it was farther.

“Next time I’ll get Broadway tickets and we’ll make a night of it,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“Feel free to stay at the flat,” Louisa said.

“I prefer the hotel,” he said, putting his arm around me and kissing the side of my head. “I’ve been a shitty fiancé. But unlike you, these Wall Street types seem to need a ridiculously long courtship before they’ll donate a dime to my campaign.”

“Go. Really. I’m in good hands here,” I said, indicating Louisa.

“I won’t let her out of my sight,” she told him.

What a difference the truth makes. How violently my confidence would have ebbed had Max left again and I still thought him capable of cheating. I would have been scouring for telltale signs: averted eyes, a fixation with the phone, fidgeting, constant excuses. Finding nothing, I would have assumed he was particularly adept at hiding it. I would have driven us both insane. As for Dani, considering how lovely and generous she was behaving towards me now, I let go of the idea that she had deliberately tried to plant doubts about Max in my mind. Sadly, she believed this about her father, and if, for her sake, Max was willing to let her, I had to as well.



* * *



? ? ?

Max not only stayed the night in New York, he was summoned to Albany for an emergency vote the next morning, which kept him away two more nights. But now it was Dani’s absences that preoccupied me. She had skipped her lessons the day she’d drifted off in the greenhouse and ended them early the day after, leaving her room only to get a snack or to warm up some kitten food. There was a time I’d have been grateful for the reprieve, but she’d been so helpful, such good company, that now I missed her.