His Grandfather's Command

Chapter Nine — Vivienne

I chose my clothing very carefully

First option, the green dress. Too familiar. Too much like I was reaching for a prop.

Second option, dark jeans and a blouse. Too casual. Too much like I was pretending this was normal.

Third option, a simple black dress I'd bought for a work function two years ago that was neither remarkable nor embarrassing and asked nothing of anyone who looked at it.

I went with the black dress.

Flat shoes. My mother's gold earrings. Hair down.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and had the quiet internal negotiation I'd been having with my reflection since I was old enough to understand that rooms had expectations.

You're fine. You're here. Don't shrink.

I went downstairs at five to seven.

The dining room was warmer than it had looked during Mrs. Hale's tour.

Lit properly, with the overhead kept low and the sideboard lamps doing the actual work. The table was set for four, which I registered with a quiet internal adjustment because Mrs. Hale had said dinner at seven without mentioning that dinner at seven involved additional people.

Elias was already there, standing near the sideboard with a glass of something dark, still in his work clothes which I was beginning to understand was simply how he existed in the evenings jacket gone, sleeves rolled, the slight dishevelment. He looked up when I came in.

His eyes did the thing the quick complete assessment and then settled.

"You found it," he said.

"I followed the smell of food," I said. "It wasn't difficult."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Drink?"

"Water is fine, thank you."

He poured it himself rather than calling for anyone, which I noted. He brought it to me and we stood at a slight distance that was neither close nor pointed and I was about to ask who else was coming when the door opened.

Theodore came in first.

He saw me and his face did the warm private thing it always did and he crossed the room and took my hand in both of his and said "Aria. You look lovely. How is the room?"

"Perfect," I said. "Thank you for the flowers."

He smiled. "I don't know what flowers."

"Of course you don't," I said.

He laughed and moved toward his chair at the head of the table and I turned toward the door where the second arrival had appeared and the temperature of the room changed in a way that had nothing to do with the heating.

She was beautiful.

I want to say that first because it was the first true thing and because I have never seen the point in pretending not to notice things that are plainly visible. Vivienne Ashcroft was tall and polished in a red dress that had been chosen with the specific intention of being the most significant thing in any room it entered. Dark hair, immaculate. A smile that arrived before she did, warm and open and completely constructed.

Her eyes found me immediately.

And in the half second before the smile fully assembled itself,I saw it.

Just a flash. Just a sliver of something cold and assessing and deeply, specifically unwelcoming.

Then the smile arrived completely and covered it so thoroughly that if I hadn't been paying the kind of attention I always paid I would have missed it entirely.

"Aria," she said, coming toward me with her arms slightly open in the manner of a woman who hugged people as a social maneuver rather than an expression of feeling. "I've heard so much about you."

She kissed the air beside my cheek. Expensive perfume. The kind that announced itself.

"Vivienne," I said. "It's lovely to meet you."

"Isn't it wonderful that we finally have the chance?" She held my hands briefly, a gesture that looked like warmth and functioned as an opportunity to look me over from close range. "Theodore has been so mysterious about you. We've all been so curious."

We. Establishing herself as the voice of a collective I hadn't met yet.

"All good things I hope," I said pleasantly.

"Oh, of course." She released my hands and turned to Elias. She kissed his cheek. He accepted it with the stillness of a man who had been navigating this particular social performance for years and had made a private peace with it. "Elias. You look exhausted. Are you sleeping?"

"I'm fine," he said.

"You always say that." She touched his arm briefly. Then turned back to me with the smile. "He never sleeps enough. I've been telling him for years."

"Vivienne," Theodore said from the head of the table. "Come sit down."

She sat across from me.

Which meant I had Elias to my right, Theodore at the head, and Vivienne directly across the table where she could look at me for the entirety of dinner without it appearing anything other than natural.

I unfolded my napkin.

Careful, Elias had said. Not afraid. Careful.

Mrs. Hale and a young woman I hadn't met brought the first course and Vivienne waited until they had left the room before she began.

"So," she said, with the bright interested energy of someone who was about to ask questions they already knew the answers to. "Tell me about yourself, Aria. Theodore has been so sparse with the details."

"There isn't a great deal to tell," I said. "I'm fairly straightforward."

"Oh I doubt that." The smile. "Theodore doesn't choose straightforward people. Do you Teddy?"

"I choose interesting people," he said. "They're not always the same thing."

Vivienne laughed a lovely sound, perfectly disguised. "Where are you from originally, Aria? Your family?"

"I grew up in Queens," I said.

"Queens." She repeated it with an inflection so slight it could not be called anything specific. "How wonderful. And your parents, are they in the city?"

The table went very slightly still.

Elias, to my right, didn't move. But I felt the quality of his attention shift.

"My parents passed away," I said evenly. "Eighteen months ago."

Vivienne's hand went to her chest. "Oh Aria. I'm so sorry. I had no idea." The sympathy was immediate and complete and as thoroughly constructed as everything else about her. "That must have been devastating. Both of them together?"

"A car accident," I said.

"How awful." She shook her head slowly. "And before that? What did they do?"

"My father was an engineer," I said. "My mother taught primary school."

"How lovely." Another inflection. This one carrying the precise suggestion of modest, without ever using the word. "A real salt of the earth family."

"I think so," I said. "Yes."

I reached for my water glass.

Across the table Vivienne smiled at me with her warm constructed warmth and I smiled back with mine and we understood each other completely.

The main course arrived and Vivienne pivoted.

"Elias tells me you've been at Calloway's," she said. "On Fifth. The restaurant."

"That's right."

"I've been there actually. It's very .." She tilted her head. "Cosy."

Cosy. Meaning small. Meaning ordinary. Meaning beneath this table and everyone sitting at it.

"It's a good restaurant," Elias said.

Vivienne looked at him. A flash of something, so fast, so controlled and then back to me. "Of course it is. I only meant it has a certain …" She waved her hand gracefully. "Character. Neighbourhood charm." She smiled. "I imagine you'll miss it."

"I'm sure I'll visit," I said.

"Of course." She cut her food. Set her knife down. Looked at me with those warm eyes that weren't. "It must be quite an adjustment. All of this." Another graceful gesture, meaning the house, the table, the silver cutlery, the life. "Quite different from what you're used to."

"Most new things are different from what you're used to," I said. "That's rather the point of them."

A beat.

Theodore made a sound that he converted smoothly into clearing his throat.

Elias reached for his wine glass.

Vivienne's smile didn't move.

"Of course," she said warmly. "How sensible you are."

"I try," I said.

She looked at me for a moment really looked, the performance briefly suspended and I looked back steadily and we sat in the candlelit dining room of the Vandermeer townhouse and had the conversation.

I see you, I said with my eyes.

Good, hers said back. Then you know what's coming.

After dinner Theodore excused himself early tiredness, he said, though I suspected strategy and Mrs. Hale brought coffee to the sitting room where the three of us relocated.

Vivienne sat closest to Elias on the sofa. I took the armchair.

She talked. Fluidly, confidently, with the ease of a woman in her natural habitat family references I didn't share, memories I wasn't part of, the casual shorthand of people who had been in each other's lives for decades. She wasn't excluding me loudly. She was excluding me architecturally, building a structure of shared history around herself and Elias that I was simply not inside.

I listened. I noted. I drank my coffee.

Then she said lightly, sweetly, turning to me with the smile "It must be hard, not having family around you at times like this. With just the brother."

I set my coffee cup down.

"Noah," I said.

"Sorry?"

"His name is Noah." I held her gaze pleasantly. "Not just the brother. Noah."

A pause. Something flickered in her eyes.

"Of course," she said. "Noah. How lovely that you have each other."

"We do," I said. "We really do."

She smiled.

I smiled.

Elias looked between us with the expression of a man watching something he recognised and had not enjoyed in previous iterations.

Shortly after, Vivienne announced she had an early morning. She kissed Elias's cheek. She took my hand again briefly, that same close-range assessment disguised as warmth.

"I'm so glad we finally met," she said to me. Her eyes said something entirely different.

"Me too," I said.

She left.

The sitting room exhaled.

Elias and I sat in the quiet for a moment. The clock on the mantelpiece. The distant sound of the city. The particular quality of a room that had been holding its breath and had finally been allowed to stop.

"She's always like that," he said. Not quite an apology. More an acknowledgment.

"I know," I said.

He looked at me. "You held your own."

"I noticed things," I said simply.

"Go and get some rest," he said. "First days are long."

I stood. Smoothed my dress.

"Elias," I said.

He looked up.

"She's going to be a problem," I said. "I just want you to know that I know that. And that I'm not going to pretend otherwise to make things easier."

He held my gaze for a long moment.

"I know," he said quietly.

"Good," I said. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight Aria."

I went upstairs.

I sat on the edge of the enormous white bed in the room with the garden view and the fresh flowers and my mother's earrings in the dish on the nightstand and I thought about cold eyes behind warm smiles and architectural exclusion and the particular patience required to play a long game against someone who had been playing it longer.

Then I texted Noah.

First dinner. Still standing.

His reply came in eleven seconds.

That's my girl. Details tomorrow.

I put my phone down and looked at the ceiling of my new room in my new life and felt the anxiety in its passenger seat.

I was getting ready.