The Vows We Never Said

Chapter Three

Neither of them had an answer to give the silence, so they let it sit there in the middle of the maze until it became obvious that walking away was the only thing left to do with it.

"I need to see the rest of the property," Nora said, because it was true and because it was the only sentence she could produce that didn't involve asking Theo Castellan why his fiancée wanted her specifically standing in this garden. "The greenhouse. The east lawn. Wherever the party's actually going to happen."

"Nora"

"The greenhouse, Theo."

He took her there without arguing again, which told her almost as much as anything he might have said. The Theo she remembered had never been good at letting a conversation drop before he'd won it. This one walked in silence with his hands in his pockets, like a man conserving something.

The greenhouse hadn't fared any better than the maze: panes of glass gone milky with age, one whole wall thick with vine, the old iron frame rusted into a color somewhere between orange and brown. But inside, when Theo pushed the warped door open, the air went warm and green and close, and Nora felt something in her chest loosen despite every reason it had to stay locked.

"This I can work with," she said, mostly to herself, running a hand along a bench of terra cotta pots gone dry and cracked. "Good bones. It just needs someone to"

"Show up on purpose." Theo's voice was quiet behind her. "You said that in the driveway. About the maze."

She hadn't realized he'd been listening that closely.

"It's true of most things," she said and didn't turn around, because she didn't trust her face not to give away more than the sentence already had.

A voice cut through the greenhouse door before either of them could decide what to do with the silence that followed.

"There you are." An older woman stood in the doorway, silver hair pinned back with the kind of effortlessness that took decades to earn, a cardigan draped over one shoulder like armor she'd stopped needing to prove was armor. Sharp eyes moved from Theo to Nora and back again, missing nothing. "Theodore. You disappeared for forty minutes and didn't tell your grandmother where you'd gone."

"Grandma Eleanor." Something in Theo's shoulders eased, just slightly, in a way Nora recognized as the particular relief of someone walking into a room with an ally in it. "This is Nora Vance. She's doing the garden."

Eleanor's gaze settled on Nora with an intensity that felt less like scrutiny and more like recognition.

"Vance." She said the name slowly, turning it over. "I remember that name."

"Grandma."

"I'm allowed to remember things, Theodore; I'm eighty-one, not senile." Eleanor stepped fully into the greenhouse, and Nora had the distinct sense of being read, cover to cover, in under ten seconds. "You're the one from before. The one he doesn't talk about."

"Grandma"

"It's fine," Nora said, surprising herself with how steady it came out. "I am that one, yes."

Something shifted in Eleanor's face, not pity, which Nora had braced for, but something closer to satisfaction, like a puzzle piece sliding into a place she'd been saving for it.

"Good," Eleanor said.

"Good?" Theo looked genuinely thrown, which Nora suspected didn't happen to him often.

"I said good, Theodore; I don't intend to explain myself to you in a greenhouse." Eleanor's eyes moved back to Nora, sharper now, quieter, like she was choosing her next words the way you'd choose a step over unstable ground. "You're staying on for the full contract? Eight weeks?"

"That's the plan."

"Good," Eleanor said again, and this time there was something underneath the word that Nora couldn't quite name, not quite a warning, not quite a request, but close enough to both that it settled into her stomach and stayed there. "Someone in this family ought to be looking closely at things around here. It may as well be someone who already knows how to look."

"Grandma, what is that supposed to mean?"

Eleanor didn't answer him. She was still looking at Nora, and for just a moment, something passed between them that had nothing to do with gardens or contracts or the six years of silence sitting in the room like a fourth person.

"Ask your fiancée," Eleanor said finally to Theo, without breaking Nora's gaze, "why she requested this particular landscape architect by name, out of every firm on the eastern seaboard. I'd be very curious to hear the answer she gives you." She straightened her cardigan, the picture of an old woman simply passing through. "Dinner's at seven. Don't be late, either of you."

She left the way she'd arrived unhurried, unbothered, leaving a silence behind her that felt considerably louder than the one before she'd walked in.

Theo stared after his grandmother for a long moment before turning back to Nora.

"She already knew," he said slowly. "About Camille requesting you. Before I told her."

Nora felt the cold from the maze return, settling somewhere just under her ribs.

"Theo," she said. "How long has your grandmother been keeping secrets from you about your own engagement?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The look on his face said he was asking himself the exact same question and, for the first time since Nora had pulled through the gates that morning, that he genuinely didn't like where the answer might lead.