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I wasn’t sure what about the message bothered me most. That he’d written it as a business email, that he was justnowreaching out, that he just assumed I’d give him a free pass for the radio silence until now, or the way he’d signed off.
Fondly.Fondly?
“He already is unbearable,” I said to Nancy. She sat across from me at the oak table, her teacup sitting untouched in front of her. She focused on her biscuits and how terribly overbaked they were. “‘Thank you for being patient’—it isn’t as if I had a choice.”
Nancy grunted in response.
“An email, Nancy? The first time he reaches out to me, he sends a godforsaken email? And signs it off withfondly?”
She knocked a frail knuckle against the top of her biscuit. “Are they trying to break their customer’s teeth?”
I sat back in my seat. The tearoom at the country club was empty this time of day, mostly because this was when they hosted hot yoga down in the workout wing. It leftNancy and me to enjoy our tea in peace, and that was all that mattered to me.
Since Mimosa Morning, my parents had implemented a new rule: now, I could no longer go anywhere without Sumner Pennington, not even going to Nancy’s alone. So, due to the addendum, Sumner had accompanied Nancy and me for tea, though he wasn’t present at the moment.
He’d gone out into the hallway to answer a phone call, though I could still see him pass in front of the doorway from time to time, no doubt checking to make sure I hadn’t done anything to get us both into trouble.
Now, I turned the contents of the email, which had arrived in my inbox shortly after Sumner stepped out into the hall, over and over in my mind, unable to stop one line of thought from surfacing. I never considered myself a conspiracy theorist, like Sumner had said, but I couldn’t help from wandering down that path. What if… what if SumnerwasAaron Astor? What if that was why “Aaron” was finally sending an email—because I’d told Sumner I wanted to speak to him.
No. It didn’t make sense.
But…
I looked over my shoulder once more, but Sumner was still in the hall. I leaned forward, lowered my voice. “Aaron Astor wouldn’t go undercover to meet me first… would he?”
Nancy raised a gray eyebrow at me. “Why would he go to all that trouble?”
“To get an idea of the woman he’s going to marry?”
“He hasn’t seemed at all interested in the womanhe was going to marry before, has he? Hasn’t called, hasn’t reached out to you personally?”
“Well, no, but?—”
“I doubt he’d go through all that trouble for you, dearie.”
“Right?” I picked up my tea and drew in a breath of the floral scent before taking a sip. I made a face. Steeped far too long. “Right. That stuff only happens in movies.”
Nancy picked up her tea biscuit and made a face at it, hitting it onto the table. Not even a crumb fell off. “Then again, it isn’t too often you see an arranged marriage in this day and age, either.”
I looked at my phone again, though the words on the email hadn’t changed. “Fondly,” I scoffed. My anger grew each time the word echoed in my head. “I met my future mother-in-law last weekend. It’s funny, isn’t it? I met Mrs. Astor before I ever even spoke with her son.”
Nancy pursed her lips at me, crumbs from her biscuit dotting at the corner of her mouth. “It isn’t funny.”
“Not funny ha-ha.”
The server came over and replaced our biscuit plates with the brunch we ordered. For Nancy, it’d been a simple platter—eggs, sourdough toast, roasted potatoes. For me, avocado toast. Not nearly as brilliant as the toast at Pierre’s, but close. Sumner had ordered their pot roast hash. Thank God they didn’t serve beans on toast.
I picked up my fork in my right hand and grabbed my knife with my left. “Sumner hid from her, did I tell you that? Mrs. Astor, I mean. Well, he says he was hiding from my father, but?—”
“Sumner, Sumner,” Nancy said in a chiding voice.She, too, followed my movements and picked up her fork in her right hand. Holding the silverware this way, against the “proper” table manners, was a habit I’d learned from her, a small show of rebellion against the strict rules of etiquette. “You talk about him an awful lot.”
“I do not. You just only listen to me when I bring up his name. And besides, he’s my friend. I can talk about him.”
“You can’t be friends.”
I stabbed a piece of my toast with my fork, making sure it had an ample amount of salmon, but paused before taking a bite. “Stuck in the dinosaur age, are you? Men and women can be friends.”
“It’s not that men and women can’t be friends.” Nancy pointed her fork at me. “It’s thatyou twocan’t be friends.”