In the vast, carefully cultivated gardens, their party sprawled away from one another—it seemed almost impossible to stay in each other’s sights across nearly two thousand acres (conversion from hectares provided, annoyingly, via Griffin’s phone), and so Manon had made the declaration: They would wander freely, if they so wanted, and meet again in two and a half hours by the front gates, making their way all together to the train back to Paris.
Initially, Layla felt a rush of relief at this new plan—the thought of how easy it would be for them all to drift naturally away fromone another, for her not to have the sideshow sense of herself when Robert and Manon and Jamie and Samantha were all within easy reach. But even though the splits she was hoping for seemed to naturally come to pass—Rosie (who had seen the CoppolaMarie Antoinettemany, many times) and Céline deciding to take the estate train over to Trianon and the Queen’s Hamlet, Robert and Manon and Abram and Damaris opting to go to the Gallery of Coaches, Jamie and Samantha lingering longer in the Orangery than anyone else cared to—she still could not relax in the foursome she and Griffin formed with Michael and Emily.
It was stuck in her head, thatHm.
Not the second one, thankfully, which she was privately thinking of as theI must have my rusty horny wires crossedHm, but the first one.
The one where Griffin seemed doubtful about Michael and Emily.
She could see it now, unfortunately, in the open air, where the excesses of each garden—huge sculptures, elaborate water features, gigantic shrubs carved into curving, unnatural shapes—at least had to contend with the ill-matching plainness of the now-cloudy sky above. Layla could focus better out here, but unfortunately, that focus was on the way Emily held a huge map of the grounds in her hands, how she seemed to be smilingly but anxiously insistent about matching each grove they walked through with its official name.
Oh, Apollo’s Baths. This one is the Ceres Fountain. See, it’s called Star Grove because of how the paths are laid out…
Yeah, she could see it.
This was not an honest Emily.
This was an Emily Layla could remember from other moments over the course of their long relationship: their very first meeting,when Emily showed Layla her room, trying to make excuses for the Barbie apartment she still had in one corner (I don’t really play with those anymore, she’d said nervously, apologetically); the night of Emily’s junior prom, when Jamie and Layla had come to watch the getting-ready, picture-taking of it all, and Emily had laughed too loud at every joke her date made, had given too big of a gasp at the sight of her (objectively ugly) corsage that did not match her gown; the morning of Layla’s small bridal shower brunch, when Emily had pretended to like the taste of coffee to fit in with some of Layla’s med school friends.
And while Layla didn’t know Michael well—at all, really—she also started to see that soft smile of his in a new way.
A not-hornyHmsort of way.
A suspicious-Griffin way.
Wasit adoring? Or was there something anxious about it, too?
She thought of Emily in that messy hotel room yesterday morning, her eyes pleading for Layla to somehowkeep her grounded.
Put down the map!she wanted to call across the Colonnade Grove (fine; thank you, map).Put down the fucking sometimes-useful map andlookat him. Talkto him, now that there’s no one watching.
Well. Almost no one.
“Maybe if we left them alone,” she said aloud, to the shadow responsible for all these suspicious thoughts she was having.
He was leaning a shoulder against one of the rust-colored columns, the hat he’d taken off inside the palace back on his head now, obscuring his eyes from her. But she could guess he was looking where she was, a dark chaperone for the couple across the way.
“Not sure it’d help,” he said. The grim note in his voice unsettled her further.
“Is this—” She broke off, embarrassed at first to ask what shewas thinking. She tipped her head up to the sky, the unadorned gray expanse of it, and gathered her courage up.
“Is this their usual dynamic?” she finally finished, hating how plain it made the truth: that she had not been there, at all, for this very important thing in Emily’s life. That she was a latecomer to it, completely unprepared for the task of fixing whatever was wrong here.
Griffin cleared his throat. Shifted his shoulder against the column. “I only met her once,” he said. “Before this.”
She lowered her head again, meeting his eyes. Well, the brim of his hat, at least.
“Really?” She was strangely thrilled by this information.We reallyarefriends!she felt like shouting, except, obviously, that would be deranged. You weren’t friends with someone on account of you both being shitty friends and/or sisters to other people.
“You might have heard,” he said, a note of knowing sarcasm in his voice, “I don’t get out much.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. “On account of your not-job,” she said.
A huff of air while he lowered his head, shaking it a little, the brim of that horrible hat hiding his whole handsome face from her. Shebethe was trying not to laugh.
After a few seconds, he spoke again. “Not to defend”—he lifted the arm not leaning, gestured to where Michael trailed a still-talking Emily—“whatever this is, but I guess if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t be a good judge of their dynamic. Like I said, I met her once, and it’s not as though I’m good at putting people at ease.”
“You should’ve showed her stuff on your phone,” Layla deadpanned. “It helps.”
