Page 59 of The CEO’s Assistant

She had spent two weeks getting ready to be told what she had done. Being told she hadn't done anything was worse, and she stood in her own kitchen and accepted it. Cordelia put the crab in and set the timer, and after that there was nothing left to do, and she stayed where she was.

"I want to say something," she said, "and it isn't enough."

"Go ahead."

"I've done a thing since I was thirty. Going somewhere else in my mind while I'm still physically in the room." She had never said all of it out loud to anybody, including Eleanor, who had figured it out without being told. "I'm not going to grow out of it at fifty-three, and I'd be lying if I stood in this kitchen and promised you it won't happen again. It will. It'll probably happen before Christmas." She made herself finish. "What I can do is try not to be that woman with you. Try. That's all I have, and I know it isn't much."

Wren didn't answer for long enough that Cordelia could hear the timer. "You've never told me something you couldn't promise," Wren said.

"No, because promises are important to me."

Wren picked the knife back up. "Okay." She got to the last lemon and lined up the pieces on the board. "Say it to me again in a year, and I'll tell you how you did."

A year. Wren had said it like it was already settled.

They ate at the table by the window while the fog came the rest of the way in from the water, and neither of them got up to turn on a lamp when the overcast sky threw shadows throughout the room. Wren ate like somebody who hadn't been eating. Cordelia watched her go back for more and passed her the bread when her plate got low.

"Remy sent me the memo," Wren said, halfway through. "This morning at seven. Before anybody else saw it."

"Did she?"

"She wanted to know if the third paragraph was too much." Wren pulled a shell apart with her thumbs. "It wasn't."

"No, it was very well written."

"She asked me not to tell you she'd asked, though."

"Then the secret is safe," Cordelia said.

Wren laughed at that.

At seven this morning, her daughter had sent the memo draft to a woman who was supposed to be on leave, because Wren was the one she wanted to hear feedback from. Cordelia sat with that and found she didn't mind at all.

By the time they finished, the fog had come up the garden as far as the bottom step and stopped there. Cordelia cleared the plates and put them in the sink and left them, which she had never done before. Then she picked up the bottle from the counter and two glasses by the stems and pushed the porch door open with her shoulder.

The porch was cold now. Cordelia took the blanket off the back of the second chair and handed it over before she sat down, and Wren put it across her knees. Cordelia poured wine for both of them. They couldn't see the water anymore, but they could still hear it under the headland.

"Eleanor bought this," Cordelia said.

"I know she bought all of it."

"No, the second row was different." Cordelia turned her glass a quarter turn on the arm of the chair. "The front row was for everyday drinking. The second row she bought for things that hadn't happened yet, like Remy finishing school or some anniversary or other. She'd come back from town with a bottle, put it at the back, and tell me what it was for, and I'd say she was being ridiculous."

"How many are left?"

"Nine."

Wren looked at her glass and didn't drink from it.

"I haven't opened one since she died," Cordelia said. "I couldn't figure out what any of them were for anymore."

"And tonight?"

"Tonight I didn't try to figure it out."

While they sat there the fog came up over the bottom step and as far as the glass. Wren pulled the blanket higher.

"I want to ask you for something," Wren said.