Love Died in the Seventh Spring

Chapter 3: The Foundation

The Cross Foundation occupied the top two floors of a building on Merchant Row, and I had worked there part-time for six years, first as a volunteer and then as the unglamorous glue that held donor relations together. I had never taken a salary. Julian's family had never offered one. The arrangement had always been understood as a gift I was giving to his world, and I had given it the way I gave everything, completely and without being asked.

On Thursday I went in as if nothing had happened.

The office was bright and cool and smelled of fresh flowers, which was Lila's doing, she ordered the flowers now, that had been her first innovation. She was at her desk by the window when I came in, and she looked up and smiled, and there was nothing in her face but professional warmth.

"Cassandra, hi. I didn't think you were coming in today."

"Seating chart," I said. "Your gala doesn't seat itself."

She laughed, a small bright sound. "You're a saint. Honestly, Julian is so lucky to have you. I don't know how he'd get through anything without you."

"Neither does he," I said. "That's why he keeps me."

I spent the afternoon at the table in the corner with the donor list and the floor plan. I knew these people. I knew which widow could not sit beside which banker, which trustee would pay for the privilege of being near the stage, which of Julian's cousins were still not speaking and had to be separated by at least two tables. I built the chart like a chessboard, and while I built it I listened.

Lila took three personal calls. She laughed twice. She said the word later four times. And when she left her desk for a meeting, she left her phone face-down on the blotter, which is the gesture of someone who has never once been afraid.

At four o'clock Julian came through the office with his father, and he stopped at my table and put his hand on my shoulder, warm and heavy and public. "Working hard?" he said.

"Always," I said.

"Don't stay too late." He squeezed once and moved on, and his father nodded at me the way he nodded at staff, and I understood, with a clarity that felt almost like relief, that in this building I was not a Cross and never had been. I was the woman who did the seating chart.

Julian's mother called me that night. Margaret Cross did not call often. She liked to deliver instructions in person, at the house, over drinks that I was expected to hold without sipping too fast.

"Sunday," she said. "Two o'clock. I'm finalizing gala assignments and I want you on the planning committee formally this year. The board has been asking why you aren't listed. It looks strange."

"Does it?"

"Everything about the way that foundation is run looks strange, Cassandra, and I am tired of explaining you." A pause. "Julian tells me you've been quiet."

"I'm fine, Margaret. Just busy."

"You should be busy with the things that matter." Her voice was dry as paper. "Come Sunday. Wear something appropriate. There will be press."

I said I would, and I hung up, and I stood in my kitchen and understood that I had been living inside a machine I had been maintaining for free, and that its owners were beginning to notice I was not smiling.