Page 117 of Wreckage and Rain

I press the doorbell. The chime is the eight-note thing that has been the soundtrack of every Christmas, dinner party and gala-launch event of my marriage. It rings twice through the foyer and then I hear the click of heels on hardwood that is the sound Vivienne Bennet makes when she is alive and approaching a door.

She opens it. Cream silk blouse. Linen trousers. Pearls. Her face is the face I have known for five years. The smile assembles in the second she sees me and settles in place and is wrong by exactly the amount it has always been wrong.

"Summer." A tiny inhale. She hasn't seen me since I left. The last time, I was at her dinner table in a black dress at the wrong end. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I know."

"Is Colt with you?"

"No."

She holds the door, still smiling. The split-second of recalibration moves through her shoulders. She's doing the math. She's wondering if I have come to scream at her, negotiate with her or to plead. She is preparing the appropriate response for each branch of the tree.

"Come in, dear."

"Thank you."

I walk past her into the foyer. The chandelier. The portraits. The fountain through the window. The grandfather clock that has been counting down something my whole adult life, possibly me.

"Would you like tea?"

"No."

"Coffee?"

"No."

"Some water, then."

"No, Vivienne. I won't be staying long."

The smile flickers. Almost imperceptibly. She tilts her head a quarter inch, the tilt she does right before the word brave.

"Of course. Shall we sit in the garden?"

"The garden is fine."

She leads me through the dining room where the seating chart put me at the wrong end of the table, past the parlor where she once told a Bennet cousin that I was spirited in a tone of voice that meant unbreakable, through the French doors that open onto the back terrace and down the stone steps to the garden where Colt sat and listened to her tell him I was common. The roses are in their late fall bloom, the last flush, the deep ones, the color of bruise and blood. The fountain runs over its stones.

We sit on the wrought-iron bench by the fountain. She crosses her legs at the ankle. She arranges her hands in her lap. The cream silk catches the late afternoon light. Pearls.

I sit across from her on the matching bench. The fountain between us. A mockingbird in the magnolia.

"How is Chicago, dear?"

"Lovely. Thank you for asking."

"And the new book?"

"It's with the printer."

"How nice. I will have to send for a copy."

"That won't be necessary, Vivienne. I wouldn't want to put you out."

She blinks once. The first signal that she has heard the tone of my voice. The wide, warm, bulletproof tone. The one she taught me how to wield by example.

"I see you have come to talk."