Chapter 312: Chapter 314: The Night Before
ARIA’S POV
She couldn’t sleep.
She’d known she wouldn’t be able to. Had known it since about seven PM when the house had gone quiet and Damien had gone to Richard’s estate for the night....tradition, Mei had insisted, you don’t see each other before the wedding, and Damien had looked at Aria with the expression of a man who had opinions about tradition and had chosen, for once, not to voice them.
He’d kissed her at the door for a long time.
Then he’d gone.
Now it was eleven PM and the estate was quiet around her and she was sitting in the window seat of their bedroom in his jumper....her jumper now, she’d claimed it so long ago it had stopped being a question....with her knees pulled up and the grounds dark outside and tomorrow everywhere.
She wasn’t afraid.
That was the thing she kept checking and kept finding true. She wasn’t afraid of tomorrow. Wasn’t having doubts, wasn’t running calculations about risk and consequence the way she ran calculations about everything. She was just....awake. Too full of something to sleep. Too aware of the specific weight of what tomorrow meant to let her brain go quiet.
She looked at the east garden from the window.
The chairs were already arranged. White, simple, rows of them in the evening dark. The arch where the cellist would sit. The path between the chairs that she was going to walk down tomorrow in the dress that was hanging in the room down the hall.
She’d walked past it twice today without opening the door.
She looked at the ring on her finger.
She thought about Eleanor Blackwood at twenty one deciding what she wanted before she had permission to want it.
She thought about herself at twenty three walking through these gates with a false name and a bag packed for two weeks that had turned into....this. All of this. The ring and the arch and the chairs in the east garden and a man at his grandfather’s estate who had kissed her at the door for a long time before he’d let himself leave.
Her phone buzzed at ten fifteen.
Mom.
She answered.
"You’re awake," her mother said.
"So are you."
"I asked first." A pause. "Are you okay."
"I’m good Mum. I’m just...." She looked at the garden outside. "Awake."
"Me too." Her mother’s voice was soft. The late night version of it.....quieter than the daytime version, the one Aria remembered from childhood. Sick nights and early mornings and the specific warmth of knowing someone was on the other end of the line. "I keep thinking about when you were small."
"What about it."
"You used to climb into my bed during thunderstorms," Mei said. "You’d pretend you weren’t scared. You’d lie there completely still and I’d pretend I didn’t know you were terrified." A pause. "And eventually you’d say....Mama, I think I might stay here tonight. Like it was your idea."
Aria smiled.
"I remember," she said.
"Tomorrow you’re going to be okay," Mei said. "The same way you were always okay. Because you decide to be." A pause. "But I wanted you to know that I’m here. The way I was always here." Her voice did something small. "My girl."
Aria pressed her lips together.
"Mum," she said.
"I know," Mei said. "Go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning."
"I love you."
"I love you more," Mei said. "I always have."
She hung up.
Aria sat with the phone in her hand for a moment.
Then she heard the knock at the door.
She heard the knock.
Soft. Tentative. Not Mei....Mei knocked differently. Not Marcus....Marcus didn’t knock tentatively about anything.
She got up.
She opened the door.
Lucy was standing in the corridor in her civilian clothes....not the estate uniform, just jeans and a jumper, her hair down, holding a small paper bag that smelled like the bakery two blocks from the estate that did the almond croissants Aria’s mother loved.
She looked at Aria.
Aria looked at her.
"I couldn’t sleep," Lucy said. "And I thought...." She stopped. Looked at the bag. "I didn’t really think. I just went to the bakery and came back and knocked on your door." She paused. "Is that weird."
"No," Aria said.
"It might be weird."
"It’s not weird." Aria stepped back. "Come in."
They sat on the window seat.
Lucy opened the bag and took out two croissants wrapped in paper and handed one to Aria and kept one for herself and they sat side by side looking at the dark garden and the chairs arranged in rows and ate croissants at eleven PM the night before the wedding.
"It looks beautiful," Lucy said. Nodding at the garden.
"It does," Aria agreed.
"The arch is new. They put it up this afternoon."
"I saw."
Lucy looked at the garden for a moment. "Do you remember when you first got here and you used to walk the grounds every morning."
"Yes."
"You had that map." Lucy looked at her. "From the staff briefing. You’d folded it into quarters and you always had it in your apron pocket." She paused. "I thought you were just thorough. Very dedicated new maid."
Aria looked at her.
"I know now that you were memorising the layout," Lucy said. Not accusatorially. Just...knowing. "But at the time I just thought...this woman is very serious about her job." She smiled slightly. "I liked you immediately. You were the only maid who never complained about the east corridor. Everyone else hated the east corridor because it was cold in winter."
"I was in the east corridor every morning because the greenhouse was accessible from the east corridor," Aria said.
"I know that now." Lucy looked at the garden. "At the time I just thought you had a good attitude about cold corridors."
Aria laughed.
Lucy looked at her sideways.
"You have no idea," Lucy said, "how long I’ve been waiting to hear you laugh like that in this house. Not the polite version. That one."
"I laughed when I was here before."
"Not like that." Lucy shook her head. "There was always something underneath it before. When you were here as....the other version of you. Something careful." She paused. "It’s gone now."
