POV: Jasmine
The restaurant was up a flight of stone steps off the main square, with an open terrace strung with small yellow bulbs and a view down a slope of olive trees to the dark water past them.
Aurora was in a small white dress with a bow at the back. She had insisted on the bow. She was carrying the rabbit. The rabbit was, apparently, also attending.
Nora sat across from me with her hair up in the braid Leo had noticed.
She did not know that her soon-to-be fiancé had bought a ring earlier that day with my hand on his elbow. She did not know what was sitting in his jacket pocket back at the villa, against his ribs, tied with brown twine.
She did not know.
I held the secret in the back of my throat the way I had held a hundred secrets in a hundred professional rooms, only this one was warm, and that was the part I was not used to.
The dread under my collarbone was still there. It had not lifted since the salon. It rode under everything tonight — under the candles, under Aurora's running commentary about the bread, under Nora's hand reaching across the table to push my glass closer when the waiter poured.
Tonight, after Aurora is down. I tell Liam tonight. Whatever it is or isn't.
Aurora was studying Nora across the table with the concentrated attention of a woman conducting a job interview.
"Mama," she said finally, setting her fork down.
I turned to her. "Yes, baby."
Aurora straightened in her chair. "I have decided."
I leaned closer, matching her seriousness. "Decided what, my love?"
"About Aunt Nora." She pointed across the table with her fork. The fork still had a piece of pasta on it. "She is beautiful."
Nora put a hand to her chest, half-laughing. "Aurora, baby —"
"I have decided," Aurora repeated, with the gravity of a verdict, and went back to her pasta.
The laugh that came out of me was shorter than it should have been. It was real, but it was small.
I watched Nora go pink under the yellow lights and reach for her wine, and I felt the love I had for her rise up clean for one second.
"She has been working her way up to that all evening," I said. "I could see her drafting it."
Nora lifted her glass, composing herself. "Tell her I will accept the verdict graciously."
I looked down at Aurora. "Aurora, Aunt Nora accepts the verdict graciously."
"I know," Aurora said, with full authority, even though she had not heard a single word of the exchange. "Let eat!"
Aurora made it through her pasta and most of a piece of bread and a long, serious description of a cat she believed had been making eye contact with her on purpose.
She lasted exactly as long as a four-year-old at the end of a long Italian day could last, and then her chin came down onto her chest mid-sentence.
"There she goes," Nora said, soft.
I tucked the cardigan around her in the chair. "There she goes."
The rabbit sat propped in her lap like a small silent chaperone. Her breath was even and slow. Then it was just us at the table.
The waiter dimmed the lamp at our corner without being asked. He left a small carafe of water and went away. The yellow bulbs above us moved a little in the warm wind.
Nora was watching me. I let her.
"Can I ask you something?" she said eventually.
I set my glass down. "Always."
Nora set her own glass down to match. "Are you afraid of getting married?"
The question landed cleanly. I did not flinch. I picked up my glass. I set it down again without drinking from it.
"No," I said, meeting her eyes.
Nora searched my face. "Truly?"
"Truly," I told her. "I am not afraid of marrying him. I have never, for one minute, been afraid of marrying him."
She leaned forward. "But."
I exhaled. "But."
She waited. I looked across the terrace, past the bulbs, down the slope where the olive trees gave way to the dark water. Tell her something true. Not the whole thing. The part you can give her.
"I am always waiting for something to go wrong, Nora," I said, turning the glass between my fingers. "I cannot stop doing it. I have not stopped doing it once in my entire adult life. I sat in the dressing room yesterday in a dress that was just fine and I waited for the dress to tear. The dress did tear. I have a file in my head right now of every possible thing that could go wrong this week. I keep adding to it. I cannot put it down."
Nora's voice went quiet. "Jas."
"It is not him," I said. "He is the one thing on the list I do not put on the list."
She held my gaze. "That is not nothing."
"It is not nothing," I answered. "It is also not everything."
She reached across and took my hand. The rings on her fingers were warm. She is going to be wearing one more by morning.
"You know what I think?" she said.
I turned my hand over to her. "Tell me."
"I think waiting for something to go wrong is what saved your brother. And the company. And probably me, twice. I think it is one of the most useful things about you," she said. "I also think it is allowed to take this one week off."
I almost smiled. "That is what Liam said."
Nora squeezed my hand. "Liam is right."
"I know he is right," I said. "I cannot make my body believe him."
She squeezed once more and let go. I picked the glass up again. I made myself drink from it this time.
The first firework went off before I had set the glass back down.
It was small. Close. A short, soft crump over the hill behind the restaurant, and then a flare of gold opening above the olive trees in a slow, deliberate fan.
Aurora's head came up off her chest like a switch had been thrown.
"FIREWORKS," she announced to the entire terrace, eyes huge, rabbit still in her lap. "Mama, fireworks."
I reached over and steadied her in the chair. "I see them, baby."
Aurora gripped the armrest with both hands. "There is another one."
There was. A second flare, this time blue, opening lower over the same patch of sky. The few other tables on the terrace had turned to watch. The waiter had stopped at the door of the kitchen with two plates in his hands.
Nora was not watching the fireworks. She was watching me.
"Jas," she said, quiet. "This is not for an engagement." I looked at her.
"This is for you two," she said again, and her voice had something in it I could not name.
The dread under my collarbone shifted — not closed, not gone, but moved over to make room for something else. He did this. From the villa, somehow, while I was at dinner. He arranged this for me.
I picked up my phone with hands that were not quite steady.
The screen lit. One new message, sitting clean above the rest. His name. A single minute earlier.
I opened it.
‘For you and our girl. Love you both.’