Page 119

The drive passed slowly. We drove through wet green corridors of redwood and fern, past river bends, little towns with gas stations and weathered signs, and stretches of road where the trees laddered to the sun. By the time the highway dropped farther south, the forest began to thin. The air warmed and the light turned gold. Redwoods became oaks and tasting rooms, until Healdsburg appeared, looking polished and expensive.

Somewhere along the way, the meeting had stopped being abstract dread and become an entire room in my head. As we passed the vineyards in their neat rows of gold and green, I started furnishing it: five or six women I’d never met, arranged on pale furniture, all of them looking at me like they were deciding if I was to be consumed or traded. I tried to stop picturing it and couldn’t. The more time passed, the more detailed it became.

Damian took the turn onto the estate’s approach. “What are you thinking about?” he said.

I looked at him. The look on my face didn’t need explanation.

He took my hand.

The estate sat above Healdsburg in a fold of vineyard and oak, tastefully exorbitant with its white stucco, smoked glass, linen curtains, and terraces poured from pale stone.

Vivienne had won it after months of marital combat fought through asset schedules and passive-aggressive affidavits. It glinted in the sun, demure and serene, a divorce trophy that on Sunday would be publicly rebranded as Vivienne’s personal sanctuary.

We parked in the motor court, then crunched over gravel to the side gate. Beyond it, the pool terrace opened toward vineyards basking below. Evidence of Sofia’s suffering was everywhere: gleaming pool tiles, white umbrellas folded like sleeping birds on the limestone paving, six enormous canvas bags of towels under the pergola, and next to them, boxes for each cabana labeled RADIANCE, SURRENDER, INTEGRATION, SOFT POWER, and REBIRTH in my own handwriting, which made me feel suitably ridiculous. The pool floats lay limp on the grass like murdered clams.

Damian took it all in with his brow furrowed, like he was assessing an unreasonable carpentry job.

We worked together, quickly and quietly. I folded towels into cylinders with chambermaid efficiency while Damian set the loungers. I checked the pool lights and inflated the floats and did a dozen other things that didn’t matter, and the whole time a clock was running in me that had nothing to do with the one on my phone. Every task I finished was a task closer to five-thirty. By the end, I started to wish there were more towels.

I sat on a lounger when it was done, with nothing left to do with my hands. The vineyard sat there being beautiful. My heart had quietly started to thud, like it wanted to spike but was saving itself for later. I’d managed a slice of toast at seven, but I couldn’t have stomached one now. The cave had tested my strength. Summoning a dead woman in an abandoned home had been just as spine-chilling. But neither had felt as terrifying as meeting Damian’s mother.

With everything done that could be done ahead of time, we climbed back into the jeep. As Damian turned off the shaded drive onto the road, a memory from the night before came back to me.

The last time I let myself want something this much, it didn’t survive me.

Damian had said it and then gone quiet, and I’d been too tired to probe. Now it felt like one of those things you can’t bring up in daylight without it sounding like an accusation.

So I didn’t. But I felt it there, riding along between us like a third passenger.

I checked my phone. We had just three hours until the meeting. “What do I need to know before we get there?”

Damian glanced at me. “Don’t try to defend yourself against every veiled compliment. Don’t accept anything unless I tell you it’s safe. Ignore their praise or sympathy.” He looked at me. “And never drink the tea.”

I fiddled with the strap of my purse, tracking the dull, insistent thud of my heart.

“Sympathy?” I said.

“I spent years thinking my mother’s kindness had to be earned. Then I figured out it was just another weapon.”

The way he said it made me ache. I watched him turn a thought over.

“If she speaks to me like I belong to her, ignore it. If she hugs me, or says she’s missed me, or reminds me of something I did when I was a kid, let it wash right over you.” He paused, his eyes focused on the road ahead. “And know that I don’t, in any way, belong to her.”

“Why would she do that?”

He tapped his thumb against the wheel once. “To see how you react. To know which buttons she can press.”

I swallowed. I could see there was more. “What else?”

“If things change quickly, look at me.”

“Change how?”

“If the air feels wrong, or you feel sleepy, or you suddenly want to agree just to make the pressure stop, look at me, not them.”

My body went tight, like it didn’t want to move an inch. I watched the dashed white lines of the highway disappear to my right. Each one felt like a mile I couldn’t claw back.

We fell into silence for a long stretch. The oaks thinned, and soon we were back in the clutch of redwoods. The fog was a white wall in the distance, then it was tulle enveloping the trees.