“Thank god for you,” Rosie said, handing it over, then immediately using her newly freed fingers to pick up one of the four lemon-rosemary gougères she’d stacked shamelessly onto her appetizer plate pretty much as soon as they’d been set out.
“No problem,” said Layla, not really because it was necessary to say but because—with Manon’s question lingering in the air—she didn’t want to seem as though she’d been rendered uncomfortably silent.
Maybe she couldn’t tell for sure if Griffin was watching her, but right this second, she could tell that Céline was.
“He says they’re almost here,” Robert answered before tucking his phone into his pocket, turning back to the conversation he’d been having with Abram, the friend and business partner with whom—Layla knew by Manon’s ensuing eye roll—he was almost certainly discussing business.
“Well!” Manon said, clasping her hands together. “They better hurry; we’re launching soon!”
Céline cleared her throat gently.
“How will that be for you, Layla?” she said.
Of all the MacKenzie-associated guests on this boat, Layla probably knew Jamie and Emily’s aunt Céline the least well, though having met her when she was still just Jamie’s girlfriend, well over a decade ago now, it wasn’t as though their acquaintance was casual. She’d spent multiple holidays with Céline at the family table,had once spent two nights sleeping on a pull-out sofa with Jamie in Céline’s small Manhattan apartment so they could go see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (“Banal,” Céline had proclaimed, but she’d still trudged out into the damp November cold with them like a chaperone, even though she and Jamie were twenty-two at the time). When Layla and Jamie separated, Céline didn’t call, but she did send Layla a short email: I’m sorry to hear about you and my nephew. You were a beautiful couple, and I wish you the best of luck.
So Layla knew her well enough to know that she could have anticipated such a direct question—Céline was blunt and at times impatient, similar in looks to Manon but completely different in personality.
Rosie closed-mouth coughed, a crumb of choux pastry escaping from behind the hand she put in front of her mouth.
“Oh, fine,” Layla said, wishing now that she wasn’t holding both her own drink and Rosie’s. One could not really casually wave a dismissive hand in the air under such circumstances, so she started to add, “You know, it was completely ami—”
But she cut herself off when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Griffin doing exactly what she’d dared him to do. His eyes on her like hot coals, pressed straight to her middle.Not like this, she wanted to shout across the deck at him.Don’t watch me like this.
She stumbled her way into what sounded, even to her own ears, like a complete lie: “I’m excited to see him.”
One of Céline’s huge, long earrings got longer as she tipped her head. Layla felt a faint bloom of sweat beneath her breasts, either from Griffin’s hot-coal gaze or Céline’s obvious curiosity.
Rosie said, her shoulders sagging, her mouth still at least partially full, “I don’t really like these, actually. Does anyone want the other three?”
Layla handed Rosie her pink drink and thought seriously about taking the plate and shoving every single one of those gougères into her own mouth, if only to give Céline something else awkward to focus on.
Why had she saidexcited?
But right as she reached a hand out, she heard Emily’s voice, a single word, one of those sharp exhalations of frustration that was meant to come out quiet, but that somehow carried.
“Mom.”
Layla straightened, her eyes going to to where Manon and Emily stood by one of the boat’s railings, closer to where the long dinner table, gorgeously set for a dozen, waited under a canopy of string lights. Already, Manon was speaking back to Emily quietly, leaning in, and Emily had a mulish expression on her face, her thumb bent beneath her first two fingers to rub absently—irritatedly, Layla thought—at the engagement ring on her third.
Quickly, Layla scanned the rest of the sparsely populated deck. Abram and Robert were oblivious, probably talking about brokered CD rates or some other deathly boring financial topic. Abram’s wife, Damaris—a relentlessly enthusiastic conversationalist when in any sort of company, probably because she was so grateful not to be talking about brokered CD rates—had cornered Michael near a potted plant, talking animatedly while he stared miserably at Emily.
And Griffin stared at Layla, now with his fullFix itface on.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Layla said, not bothering to risk another glance at Céline. Rosie, Layla could tell, was busy sucking down whatever was in her newly returned glass.
She tried to make her approach seem like a glide, a harmless stop-by only to say hello, another guest keeping the company mingling. But when she was a step or two away, Em’s eyes darted tohers and then back to Manon’s, a quick and sharp mother-daughter understanding passing between them.
When, a split second later, Manon turned to where Layla now stood, her smile was over-wide and guilty.
Oh god, Layla thought.They were talking about me.
“Layla,” Manon said, in a realof course we weren’t talking about you!voice, “did I say how well that dress suits you? It’s lovely, really.”
Before Layla could answer (“The dress is dead boring, Manon!”), Emily took a step forward and looped her arm through Layla’s elbow, linking them close.
“Layla,” Em echoed, but she kept her eyes fixed—a little icily, frankly—on Manon’s. “My mom was just telling me that Jamie and Samantha were looking into staying in a different hotel while we’re all here.”
Manon made a noise Layla had heard before: a laugh that was not really a laugh. The kind of noise you make, for example, when one of your husband’s drunk work colleagues knocks over the entire bowl of the special cinnamon-spice punch you make every year for your annual holiday party, or when your neighbor’s goldendoodle digs up all the newly planted petunias in your yard.
