by Reiss, CD
She was right.
I could still taste her on my tongue. Still wanted to crawl inside her.
She was right, and I wished she wasn’t.
“You’re right. But, Ella.” I took her by the chin so she’d look at me. “We still have to act affectionate in public.”
“I know my job.” She smirked and took my hand away. “And touching me when you don’t have to isn’t going to help me do it. So, hands off.”
“Noted.”
She turned on the shower. “And you’re still in here, because?”
“Colton’s going to be at breakfast. Let me upload his story while you get ready.”
“Fine.” She unzipped her hoodie. “Turn around, Mr. Crowne.”
I faced the towel rack and listened to her take off her clothes.
16
ELLA
As I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, Logan told me as much about Colton as he could, figuring we hadn’t been together long enough for me to know everything.
We went down to breakfast together. He had his arm around my shoulders and I kept us hip-to-hip—because that’s what people in love did.
“I’ll sit next to you,” he said. “We’ll hold hands. When one of us is saying something they shouldn’t, squeeze.”
“Got it.” My stomach rumbled with the smell of bacon, reminding me of how much we didn’t know about each other. “I should warn you. I eat.”
“Everyone eats.”
“Just don’t look surprised when I ask for seconds.”
I didn’t have time for more. Doreen and Ted came within earshot just outside the open dining room, holding hands.
“Good morning!” Doreen said cheerfully, releasing her husband’s hand to give me a hug.
“Good morning,” I said.
She seemed frail in my arms, like a leather bag full of shaking sticks.
“How did you sleep?” she asked.
“Great.”
“Logan’s snoring didn’t keep you up?”
I looked at my husband. Did he snore? I’d been so relaxed and satisfied the night before, a ten-megaton bomb wouldn’t have woken me.
“No,” I said, offering nothing else.
“I don’t snore,” Logan added.
“We could hear him across Crownestead,” Ted added. “Boy after my own heart.”
I was supposed to know this. The entire way forward was lined with booby traps.
“I’m a really deep sleeper,” I said, taking Logan’s hand. “Like a dead thing. Right?”
“You’re gorgeous when you’re asleep.” He pulled me close, and we all went into the dining room.
A long cherrywood table had been set with white porcelain plates, polished silver, and clusters of crystal glasses.
“Did he tell you about the time he and Byron had to share a hotel room in Brussels?” Doreen said. “There’s a recording. I wonder if he still has it?”
Half a dozen people in white shirts and black vests descended on the table with pitchers of coffee and tea. They poured champagne into flutes half-filled with orange juice to make mimosas.
“I had a cold,” Logan protested, holding a chair out for me.
I sat.
“It was a series of roars.” Ted held out a chair for Doreen, but she ignored him and took the place next to me, leaving Logan to sit across from me, where we couldn’t signal with a hand-squeeze.
“There could be an actual lion in the room eating me,” I said, slipping off my shoe under the table. “I wouldn’t wake up.”
“There are six places,” Logan said. “Who’s missing?”
“Lyric’s still sleeping,” Ted said, sitting at the head of the table as his coffee was poured.
I straightened my knee until my toes reached Logan’s foot, intending to signal that way.
“Dante’s actually going to spend five minutes with us,” Doreen said. “Matt woke up with a fever, so Liam took him to the doctor. Byron and Olivia are eating in their room. Colton’s—there you are!”
Colton Crowne threw himself into an empty chair, wearing low-crotch sweatpants and a ribbed tank, ass on the end of the seat and legs sprawling under the table. His beard was unkempt and his hair was hidden under a backward black cap. He bounced and tapped as if his mind was a nightclub.
“It’s so good to have you back,” Doreen said. “If we hadn’t just thrown a party, I would have thrown one for you.”
Trays of eggs, potatoes, and bacon were brought around.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ve done enough parties. And Byron and this guy getting married is the shit you throw parties for.”
“Watch your mouth,” Ted grumbled. “There are ladies present.”
“Right. Sorry, Ma.” He looked at me with eyes that were a lighter blue than his brothers’. “Sorry, Mrs. Crowne.”
He was half joking. Maybe all the way joking. I didn’t know him well enough to judge.
“You can call her Ella,” Logan said.
“They’ll make you an omelette if you want,” Doreen whispered to me.
“This is perfect,” I said, accepting a second scoop of eggs. “I’m starving.”
A woman put a latte at my place.
“Oh, thank you.”
“It’s vanilla,” Logan added.
The woman nodded and disappeared.
“So,” Doreen said, “Logan hasn’t had a chance to tell us anything about you. Your father was Basile Papillion?”
“Yes.”
“He made a dress for me for the Met Gala that was… I couldn’t believe how beautiful.”
“Stunning,” Ted said before eating a potato.
“I still have it. I was so sorry to hear of his passing. We lost a great talent.” She put a shaky hand over mine and squeezed it, looking at me with clear blue eyes that were windows to her heart. Whatever Doreen thought of me or my marriage to her son, her words about my father were sincere.
“Thank you,” I said. “He was a great man.”
“Talking about me again?” Dante Crowne blew in, perfectly put together and taking up more space than even his six-foot four frame should have.
“Hardly,” Logan said.
Dante stood beside me. “You must be the new Crowne in town.” He reached out for a handshake, but when I returned the gesture, he kissed the top of my hand.
I decided not to correct the name. Not again today.
Dante took Doreen’s seat at the foot of the table. “Colton.” He snapped open his napkin and laid it on his lap. “You’re back.”
“Don’t look so happy.”
“Run out of money?” Dante asked, turning down the food he was offered.
“Dante,” Ted growled.
I glanced at Logan. His jaw was set and his expression demanded my silence, even without his shoe pressing on my foot.
“Ella,” Doreen said with an elbow on each side of her plate and her fingers laced together, “tell us. When did you two decide to get married?”
“All unbeknownst,” Dante added casually.
“Um,” I started, catching Logan’s gaze to make sure the story was the same. “About a minute after we met again.”
To give myself time to think, I shoveled a huge forkful of egg and potato in my mouth,and chewed fully before continuing.
“It was just obvious, you know,” I said. Logan nodded slightly. I was fine. Fine. I just had to hew to the truth. “Then yesterday he walked right into my office and asked me to marry him.”
“I couldn’t wait another minute,” Logan added.
“And we were talking about dates, and I said, ‘why not now?’ and he said—”
“I said, ‘I thought you’d never ask,’” Logan finished, winking at me across the table.
“Yeah, and so we did. And here we are.”
“How romantic,” Doreen said. “I wish I could have seen it.”
“It felt just… right.” I took another forkful of eggs.
“Well,” Doreen said, “we have to have another pa
rty.”
“That’s not necessary,” Logan protested.
“Better him than me,” Colton said.
“Why not? Afraid you might enjoy yourself?” Dante turned to me. “I hope you’re teaching him how to have a good time.”
“Not your kind of good time,” Logan shot back with a subtext I didn’t understand, but I would have known if we’d been together four months.
I looked at my plate so I could pretend I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“He taking you somewhere?” Colton asked me. “Or’s he being all efficient? Like a work trip on an oil rig off the coast of Greenland or some sh—” He cut himself off mid-curse.
“That sounds fun actually.” I scraped the last of the food on my plate.
“Ella’s got her father’s talent,” Logan said. “And a sexy work ethic.”
Colton pointed his fork at each of us. “You’re the same kinda crazy.”
“Now I see it.” Ted laughed, taking his wife’s hand on the table. “Can’t you, honey?”
They looked at each other deeply, as if having a conversation without speaking.
Logan swallowed hard, then drank his coffee as if he wanted to hide behind the cup.
In the moments that passed, Doreen didn’t answer.
Dante broke the tension with a question. “I hear you’re working for your father’s label?”
“Since I was a kid.” I glanced at Logan, and he met my eyes with anticipation.
Eventually, I would have to tell this story. Better I do it in front of my husband than where he couldn’t hear it. “Until this morning actually. My stepmother…” Insulting her wouldn’t look good, even if she deserved it. “She and I had a falling out. My fault actually. Anyway, we thought it would be better if I moved on.”
“Your own thing, yeah?” Colton suggested.
“Maybe? I don’t know. I think…” Could I even say it out loud?
“Ella can do whatever she wants.” Logan’s foot rested on mine.
“I’m going to spend a while just being with my husband. You know, making sure he has everything he needs full time.”
Logan nodded slightly, and I smiled at him in victory from the top of the mountain of things I’d never, ever wanted for myself.
Doreen—the one we were trying to persuade—let out a short scoff.
“That sounds exhausting,” she said, smiling at Ted.
“My wife needs to rest after last night,” Ted said. “I think a week in Cambria will do us some good.” He winked. They laughed together as if sharing a private joke.
“What’s in Cambria?” I asked.
“Ted wanted to get away from the rat race,” Doreen said. “The boys were all grown. Lyric was in college. So we bought this house up there and it’s just lovely. Deep in this wooded area. Miles from the nearest road. You can hear the ocean and see it even, from the top of the hill.”
After taking a sip of mimosa, Ted said, “When Lyric moved out, right about then I had my first midlife crisis.”
“Your first?” Logan asked. “I didn’t even know you had one.”
“I was sick of everything. What was the point of the rat race any more? I wanted to get away—and I mean away. Your mother went along with it and we bought this house way out in Cambria. Totally off the grid. No internet. No phone. It’s one-hundred-percent solar.”
“Remember the time the water tank was empty?” Doreen giggled.
“Your showers were too long.”
“We lasted two weeks.” Doreen put her trembling hand on my arm. “And I said, ‘Enough.’ I needed to talk to someone.”
“That was when we compromised and got our place in Santa Barbara.” Ted pointed his fork at me. “You should go up to Crownestead sometime.”
“Not Cambria?” I asked. “Sounds kind of cool.”
“Dante’s the only one who can last in the Cambria house longer than a week.” Logan said.
“I don’t need to natter all day and night like you,” Dante said.
“A toast.” Ted held up his mimosa. “To my son and my new daughter-in-law.” Everyone raised a glass, and Ted directed his attention to Logan. “I always told you that when you met the one, you’d know right away.” He tilted his juice in my direction. “Welcome to the family, Ella Papillion.”
The Crowne family toasted with juice and mimosas.
“Ella,” Doreen said, putting her cloth napkin next to her plate, “I want to show you something.”
I glanced at Logan for direction. Concern sat on his face like a rigid mask.
“About what?” he asked with a much too defensive snap.
“Don’t you have business to mind?” Doreen said, standing. Everyone followed her lead.
“Ella is my business.” He put his arm around me and kissed my head. “You can have her later. I planned to take her bowling after breakfast.”
“Bowling?” I asked.
“There’s a full-sized alley downstairs,” he said.
“And it’ll be there later.” Doreen took my hand and tugged.
I had a choice. Going with Doreen was risky because without Logan present, I could say the wrong thing. But if I didn’t go with his mother, she’d think I didn’t want to be part of the family.
The first option was safer, but we had more to gain if I looked committed to not just him, but his life.
“I’ll cream you after lunch,” I said, letting go of Logan. “Go do some work or something.”
I kissed him quickly and let Doreen loop her arm around mine to lead me out of the room.
* * *
My mother-in-law made a wrong turn somewhere, and we laughed at how easy it was to get lost.
“You need a map,” I joked.
“Byron did one,” she replied.
“A literal map?”
“He printed it for guests. Full color. He labeled mine by hand with some special object so I’d always know where I was. Red Velvet Pillows. Glass Floor Lamp. Blue Mondrian. Dad’s Persian—for the carpet his father bought in Morocco. But of course I always forget to carry it around. Especially when Ted’s with me. Ah, here we are.”
She pushed through a set of wooden double doors that opened into a massive suite that was a building all its own. The center space went up two stories to the glass ceiling. The two levels between were rimmed with terraces.
Every inch of wall space was taken up with books.
The stark whites and clear glass weren’t a match for the thousands of spines, but obviously the residents didn’t care.
“Wow,” was all I could say.
Doreen waved away my awe. “We’re trying to cozy it up a bit. It’s not really who I am… all this. But it’ll do. Come.”
I followed her through another double door, into a massive closet. She turned on the light even though it had windows high above eye level, and turned a corner, into a deeper section with rows of shoes.
“You need a map for the closet,” I said.
She laughed. “And I told my husband, how many things can I wear at once?”
The end of the road was a door with a keypad and humidity-control gauge next to it. She entered the code and it beeped, opening with a hiss.
She flicked on the light. The space was bigger than it should have been for a closet-within-a-closet. Three full mannequins lined the room, each wearing an exquisite gown.
“Holy—” I stopped myself.
“Shit?” Doreen said, finishing my sentence.
“This is a Jeremy St. James,” I said, eyes wide before a wedding gown with two-inch wide seams that curved around the body, undulating with the form under it. The seams were impossibly perfect and flattering.
“I don’t think I could fit into it now,” she said. “Six children will do that.”
“And this?” I pointed at a column gown that looked simple but wasn’t. “Barry Tilden?”
“It stands up on its own. Wore it to two presidential inaugurations.” She sighed, touching the sleeve. “By the time I
wore it for the second one, I wanted to burn it.”
“Did you not like the president?”
She laughed. “Nothing like that. It was…” She tilted her head. “Ted and I were having a hard time. The children, I always wanted a full house, and they were my life, but it was hard. I had all the help a mother could want, and I still felt… well, I was angry with him. He had a life. A purpose outside the house. We were just one more thing he had to do and…” She shook her head. “I already said I was angry. But I chose that life, so I couldn’t complain, right? I knew how Teddy was and I married him anyway.”
I knew what she was getting at.
She was a smart woman.
“Logan’s like him,” I said.
“He is.”
“How did you stop being angry?”
“I had a secret.”
I wanted to cover my ears and shout la-la-la-la. If she was sleeping with the pool boy or snorting meth, I didn’t want to know.
“When did you wear this one?” I changed the subject, but she didn’t take the bait.
“I have a Master’s in literature. Poetry was my first love,” she said. “But I never presumed to have any talent. I started writing poetry and submitting to journals under a pen name. I did it out of spite. To just claim something, anything for myself. And you know what?”
“He found out?”
“After two years of submissions, one was published. I. Just. Exploded. All that anger… it came through my pores. Ted came home after dark and I threw the letter and the seventeen-dollar check across the counter and said”—she waved her arm with a flourish—“‘You don’t own me, Theodore Crowne!’”
Even though I knew the ending, the drama held me. “What did he say?”
“Well, he picked up the letter.” She pantomimed her husband by looking at her palm. “Then the check.” She switched to her other hand. “And he said, ‘How long have you been doing this behind my back, Doreen?’”
I gasped. “He did not.”
“He did. And I told him that I had to because he’d turned his back on me.”
“Good answer.”
“And he put the check down, then read the letter again. Carefully. And he said, ‘According to this, you’re a breath of fresh air. Warm. Authentic. An original voice speaking universal truth.’ And I said, ‘I read it, Ted.’ And he puts the letter down, and says, ‘I thought the woman I married was gone, but she’s not. A bunch of strangers see her. And I—’” Her voice cracked. “‘I miss her.’”