And then I turned and put my hand back toward the door, and Linus got down onto the gravel, and then Gus, and then Ivo, in three small velvet dinner suits with their hair done.
I have never heard four hundred people stop talking at the same time before.
Because every single person on that lawn was looking at three boys with Alaric Branmoor’s face.
An usher came over with the seating cards, and Rowena came down off that terrace faster than a woman of sixty-eight should be able to, and took the card out of his hand.
She did it smiling. She gave it to me herself.
And she said, loudly enough for the first four rows:
“Give me that, I’ll do it. Table twenty-seven, Catrin — by the kitchen. You’ll be more comfortable where nobody’s looking at you.”
Then she looked down at the three of them.
And her glass went out of her other hand onto the terrace steps.
The invitation came on card thick enough to cut yourself on.
Gold lettering. The wedding of Alaric Branmoor and Clementine Hale, daughter of a senator, at the house on Lake Averil.
I stood at the window of my flat in Marrowgate and turned it over about four times.
Alaric signed our divorce in 2020 without once looking up from the page, while his mother stood behind him with her coat already on.
“Mama, who’s getting married?”
Linus had hold of my jumper. Behind him Gus and Ivo were building something out of sofa cushions and arguing about it.
Four. Five in the February.
