Rebecca’s POV
The party was in forty-eight hours.
I had been carrying that number in my chest for three days the way you carry a deadline that you have prepared for thoroughly and still feel the weight of, not anxiety, not uncertainty, just the specific awareness of proximity to something significant. I had planned more events than I could count over the course of this marriage. Dinners, charity evenings, the anniversary celebration Edmund’s board had hosted, the quarterly gatherings that required the specific alchemy of the right people in the right room feeling the right things. I was good at this. I had always been good at this.
This was different.
Every previous event I had built had a single purpose: the comfort and professional benefit of Edmund Jones. I had built rooms for his
