REBECCA’S POV
I made the tea myself.
This was a deliberate choice. The staff could have done it, would have done it without being asked, the way well-briefed staff handled everything without being asked. But there was something important about doing this myself. About standing at the kitchen counter while forty people occupied my living room and the birthday of the man who had handed me a pen across the breakfast table was being celebrated, and making tea for the woman he had brought into my home with my own hands.
Not as debasement. Not as a performance of graciousness I didn’t feel. As a statement I wasn’t making to anyone except myself.
I can do this. I am doing this. Watch how I do this.
Rose stood slightly to my left and slightly behind me while I moved through the kitchen with
