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“Yeah,” I say.

“I’ve got a few friends who play hockey.” He tilts his head. “You’ve got the look. The size.” A beat. “Am I right?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“What position?”

“Defense.”

He nods like this tells him something. Maybe it does. “That’s serious work. You going pro?”

“Hoping to.”

“Same.” He glances toward Maddison, the specific glance of a man who has tied his entire identity to a thing that hasn’t happened yet. “Draft’s in April for me. Should have a good idea by then where I’m landing.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m familiar with the timeline.”

He laughs — easy, practiced — like I’ve said something funnier than I did. It’s the laugh of a man who wants you to like him before you’ve decided. I don’t perform anything back. He moves on to Caroline, which is the natural next move.

And then I look at Margo.

Really look.

She’s across the room, standing between Michael and her mother, doing the thing she does in rooms like this — the smiling, the smoothing, the specific way she takes the temperature of every person within a ten-foot radius and adjusts. But underneath it. Under the brightness that’s running at capacity right now, the posture just slightly stiffer than it should be, the way her hands are doing too much work with each other. She’s been in this room with him for four minutes and she’s already at maximum capacity, and nobody in this room can see it except me, and I’m not going to be the one who points it out to her.

I cross to her side. I don’t put a hand on her. I just stand close enough that she can feel me there. She glances over, quick, and I give her the look — just a look, one flicker — that says I see you. Then I turn to Richard. He’s watching us both from his chair with the quiet attention of a man who has spent forty years reading the thing behind the thing.

“Mr. Ashby.” I keep my voice easy. “Would you excuse us a minute? Long travel day — we should freshen up before dinner.”

It’s not a question. It’s a sentence that answers a question nobody asked.

Richard looks at me. I hold it. He’s reading me the same way he read me at the front door. The litigator’s inventory, fast and thorough. I give him everything I’ve got: I am paying attention to his daughter in a room full of people who aren’t. I need two minutes with her before this gets harder.

He sets down his glass of bourbon. He nods. Small, certain. Two men in a room, a nod passing between them like the one thing anyone needed.

“Of course,” he says.

Caroline starts to say something about the caterer’s timing and Richard redirects her, easy and practiced, the particular skill of a man who has been managing this dynamic longer than I’ve been alive.

I put my hand at the small of Margo’s back and I say, “Give me five minutes,” to the room, and I take her out of it.

Her room is very pink.

I don’t say this. I just register it. The blush walls, the white trim. The four-poster king with the canopy. The window seat with a cushion that matches the curtains. The built-in bookshelves still organized to a system she probably built at age twelve and never dismantled. Because Margo doesn’t dismantle systems. There are photos in frames on the dresser. A corkboard above the desk with the imprint of a thousand pushpins where things used to be. The whole room is the original draft of her — the girl who became the girl I know, before she learned to calibrate it.

I set both bags by the bed. I shut the door.

Then I turn around.

She’s standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed, looking at the carpet. Holding herself the way she holds herself when the performance is off and the weight is fully on. Both hands, very still, no room for any of it to show.

I don’t say anything. I cross the room and I put my arms around her.

She goes into it like she was waiting for it. Not dramatic, not breaking open. Just leaning in, face to my chest, hands coming up against my shirt, and the specific exhale of someone who has been carrying something at full tension and has just been given a place to set it down for a minute.

I hold her. I let the room be quiet.

She talks into my shirt. Not dressed up, not managed, just the words.