I open my notebook and write down a note I do not remotely need, just to give my hands something to do.
A small, disproportionate warmth spreads across my chest. I recognize it as the professional equivalent of being given a gold star by someone who gives out very few.
Beth leans toward me during the coordinator's revised explanation and whispers, "She said that to me once, in 2017, and I still bring it up at Christmas," which tells me everything I need to know about the Maddox family hierarchy. I press my smile into something more neutral and take a note I do not strictly need to take.
***
The formality dissolves entirely at the cake tasting, because sugar does that to people.
Beth has somehow already developed a rapport with the pastry chef and is requesting "just a small extra piece" of the lemon layer with the breezy confidence of a returning customer.Eleanor cannot choose between the champagne elderflower and the salted caramel, and keeps looking at each of us in turn with an expression that is really asking for permission to want both. Margaret tastes each option in precise sequence, setting her fork down between samples, offering assessments that are brief and unnervingly accurate.
My ERS brain wakes up before I can stop it. I start reading the room the way I do with clients, sorting reactions by instinct. Who needs options. Who needs permission. Who wants reassurance dressed up as decisiveness.
I point out that there is absolutely no law against different tiers having different flavors, and Eleanor looks at me as if I have solved something that has been quietly needling her for weeks.
She points her fork at me and announces to the table, “She thinks about everything,” and Margaret makes a small sound that might, in another family, count as open agreement.
At some point, somewhere between the vanilla bean and the dark chocolate raspberry, Eleanor nudges my shoulder and says quietly, "I'm really glad George has you."
The sincerity in her voice is so uncomplicated, so entirely free of calculation, that it slips past every professional defense I have and lands somewhere soft and unwisely exposed.
I smile back at her and say, “He’s easy to be there for,” and hear the truth in it as I say it, clear and unsoftened.
I do not tell her that George does not technically have me.
Beth, magnificently oblivious to the emotional undercurrent, chooses that exact moment to declare the salted caramel "frankly life-changing" and request a second fork, which gives me just enough time to get myself back under control.
I look down at my notebook and breathe.
I do not need to think about George for the rest of the tasting.
I think about George approximately every four minutes for the rest of the tasting anyway.
***
The afternoon light is low and golden when we finally step outside, the kind of late-day warmth that makes everything look slightly more significant than it is. Eleanor stands on the pavement looking pleased with the world, her coat open, squinting happily into the light.
Margaret pauses beside me before getting into her car. She does not look at me immediately. Instead, she studies the street as though the thought needs room to gather itself before she says it. “George is very careful about the people he lets into his life.” Then she turns and looks at me in a way that makes it unmistakably clear this is meant as a compliment, and a considered one at that.
Before I can produce a single useful response, she is already in the car and gone.
I stand there for a moment with my notebook still in my hand, holding the faint and deeply unsettling warmth of being approved of by someone who does not strike me as easy to impress. I am exhausted. And that has nothing to do with the number of venues visited.
Almost everything I said today was genuine, and that, I decide, is the most dangerous kind of performance.
I flag down a cab, get in, and spend the entire ride home wondering how a logistical arrangement could possibly feel this much like something else.
