Her mother washed. Emmy dried. The rhythm of it was old and familiar—her mother's ink-stained hands in the soapy water, Emmy's reaching for the dish towel that always hung from the same hook. Through the kitchen window, she could see the Henderson skeletons glowing in the yard, a strand of Christmas lights strung between their ribcages in the shape of a heart. At least Grant wasn't here to see it. Small mercies.
"Have you thought about Christmas?" her mother asked.
Emmy dried a plate carefully. "I was actually thinking I might do something quiet this year. Stay home. Work on my résumé."
"Your résumé." Her mother's tone was perfectly neutral, which was how Emmy knew she wasn't buying it.
"I just—I don't want to make things uncomfortable. For anyone." She picked up another plate. "Grant's usually here, and Bailey might come, and after everything that happened?—"
She could hear how careful she sounded. How measured. Like she was arranging place cards at a dinner party instead of trying not to say I can't sit across from him for three hours and pretend I'm fine.
"Oh." Karalyn rinsed a glass, held it up to the light, rinsed it again. "They're not together anymore, actually."
She said it the way she said everything important—casually, half-turned toward the sink.
Emmy's hands stopped on the plate she was drying.
"How do you know that?"
"West mentioned it." She set the glass in the drying rack.
Her heartbeat had gone strange—fast and uneven, like a bird hitting a window.
"What happened?"
"Hmm." Her mother handed her a serving bowl, taking her time with the transfer. "You always did follow him around. Even when you were small. And he always seemed happy enough to let you." She rinsed another dish, unhurried. "When you graduated and he came back to play for Boston, I thought it was only a matter of time."
Emmy's breath caught.
She was starting to make her peace with loving him—or something that might resemble peace, one day. It was her mother saying he always seemed happy enough to let you—like it went both ways. Like there was a version of this story where it could have.
A hot, awful pressure bloomed in Emmy's throat—not just shock but want, the raw stupid grief of wanting a thing she'd already ruined, and the shame of wanting it at all when she was the reason it was gone.
"It doesn't matter," Emmy said.
"Of course it matters."
"They broke up because of me." She heard how small it sounded. "The press, the leak, all of it—I did that. I blew up his life and his relationship and his privacy, and he hasn't spoken to me in three weeks because I'm the person who caused all of it."
"Emmy—"
"I need to fix it." She set the bowl down too hard. It rang against the counter. "I need to—if they broke up because of what I did, then I need to fix it."
Her mother dried her hands on the dish towel, folded it neatly, and hung it back on its hook.
"You can't fix other people's relationships, sweetheart. That's rather the lesson, isn't it?"
But Emmy was already reaching for her coat.
She found Bailey outside Mass General at seven-forty the next morning.
It had taken Emmy twenty minutes and one ethical compromise to find Bailey's schedule. She still had access to the Elite Connections server—Cecelia hadn't thought to revoke her login, or hadn't bothered, which amounted to the same thing. Bailey wasn't in the system. But a pediatric anesthesiologist at Mass General was, and his profile listed his rotation schedule in meticulous detail, and Emmy knew enough about how surgical teams were staffed to work backwards from there. Matchmaker math. The last useful thing the job had taught her.
The morning air was sharp enough to sting, and Emmy's breath came out in clouds as she stood near the entrance, hands in her coat pockets, watching the automatic doors cycle open and closed. Hospital staff emerged in waves—scrubs under parkas, lanyards swinging, the tired-eyed shuffle of people who'd been saving lives since before dawn.
Bailey came out alone, zipping up a dark puffer jacket, her hair in the sleek ponytail Emmy remembered from the auction. She looked exhausted—but moving like someone who'd learned to function on it a long time ago.
She saw Emmy and smiled. A little tired, a little wry.
