The Vows We Never Said

Chapter Six

Nora left Theo's text unanswered until well past midnight, then answered it anyway, because avoiding him indefinitely wasn't really an option when his estate was also her job site.

Working the greenhouse tomorrow morning. Talk afterward, if you still want to.

He wanted to. He said so within a minute of her sending it, which told her something about how little sleep he'd probably gotten either.

She arrived early enough to beat both of them, Theo and whatever conversation he thought they were about to have and found Eleanor already waiting at the edge of the kitchen garden, a canvas tote bag slung over one shoulder like she was heading out for produce instead of evidence.

"You came," Eleanor said, sounding faintly surprised, as though she'd half-expected Nora to bolt for the coast road overnight and never look back.

"I said I would."

"People say a great many things." Eleanor set off toward the old drafting room without waiting to see if Nora followed. "Come. We don't have long before the house wakes up properly."

The drafting room hadn't been touched since Nora's search through it the day before, rolled hotel renderings still stacked along one wall, the drafting tables still coated in a fine layer of dust nobody had bothered clearing in years. Eleanor pulled a manila folder from her tote and set it on the nearest table with the particular care of someone handling something more fragile than paper.

"Two years of noticing things," she said. "Bank statements Camille left open on a laptop she thought was locked. A lawyer's letterhead I recognized from a firm that specializes in hostile acquisitions, not wedding prenups. A visit to her father's office that she told Theo was a spa weekend." Eleanor tapped the folder. "None of it proves anything on its own. Together, it paints a picture I don't like."

Nora opened the folder and started reading, and the picture Eleanor didn't like came into focus: fast financial filings, correspondence, and a photocopied page from something that looked like an internal Whitfield memo referencing "Castellan integration, phase two" in language that had nothing to do with flowers or seating charts.

"Phase two," Nora repeated. "What was phase one?"

"The marriage," Eleanor said simply. "I believe that's rather the point."

Nora sat with that for a moment, feeling something settle into place that she'd been half-avoiding since the hallway the night before. This wasn't a jealous ex's paranoia, and it wasn't an overprotective grandmother's suspicion either. This was a plan, methodical and patient, moving forward whether or not anyone in this house chose to look at it directly.

"He needs to see this," Nora said.

"He does." Eleanor closed the folder gently. "But not yet. Not from me, and not from you either, not until we have something he can't rationalize away in one easy sentence over breakfast. My grandson is extraordinarily good at finding the exit door out of an uncomfortable conversation. We show him half a picture, and he'll talk himself into the half that lets him keep going."

"So what, we just wait?"

"We finish the picture." Eleanor tucked the folder back into her bag. "Her father arrives Thursday. Whatever phase two is, I suspect we'll learn a great deal more once he's under this roof."

Nora found Theo in the greenhouse an hour later, exactly where she'd told him she'd be, sleeves rolled, looking like a man who'd rehearsed an apology enough times that it had started to sound less like an apology and more like a speech.

"About last night," he started.

"Theo." She kept her hands busy with a tray of cuttings, mostly so she wouldn't have to look at him while she said it. "I'm not upset that you trust Camille. I understand why you'd want to."

"But."

"But I heard what I heard, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because it's inconvenient for you to hear it." She set the tray down and finally met his eyes. "I'm not asking you to blow up your engagement on my word. I'm asking you to actually consider the possibility that something's wrong instead of deciding in advance that it isn't."

Something crossed his face, not quite defensiveness, something closer to the discomfort of a man being asked to hold a thought he'd rather set down.

"I hear you," he said, in the tone of someone who very much wanted the conversation to be over.

"Do you."

"I do." He exhaled, and for a moment something more honest slipped through the careful composure he'd worn all morning. "I just know, Nora, if I start pulling that thread, and it's nothing, I've damaged something I can't repair over a hunch. And if I pull it and it's not nothing."

"Then you'll have to actually deal with it," Nora finished. "Instead of just hoping it goes away quietly, the way you've apparently been doing since your father died."

He flinched at that, small but real, and Nora immediately regretted how sharp it had come out even though she didn't take it back.

"That's not fair," he said quietly.

"Maybe not. But I don't think it's wrong, either."

He didn't answer that. He picked up one of the terra cotta pots instead, turning it over in his hands like it might give him somewhere else to put his attention, and Nora watched him retreat into that same familiar stillness she'd learned, six years ago, to recognize as a door quietly closing.

"Her father arrives Thursday," she said, before he could disappear into it completely. "You should be paying attention to that visit. Whatever else you decide to believe."

Something flickered across his face, not quite alarm, not quite denial either; something caught uneasily between the two.

"I know," he said. "I got the calendar update this morning."

"Did it say what it's for?"

"Business," Theo said, and even he seemed to hear how thin that sounded once it was out in the open air between them. "Just business."

Nora didn't push it further. She'd learned, in one hallway and one greenhouse and twenty-four hours, exactly how far pushing got her with a man determined not to be pushed.

She went back to her cuttings instead and let the silence between them say the rest of it that Thursday was coming whether he was ready for it or not and that whatever walked through that door with Camille's father was going to be a great deal harder to talk himself out of than a phone call through a two-inch gap in a locked door.