Chapter Text
Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg is fine.
She managed to graduate in five years with her undergraduate and juris doctor—summa cum laude, of course. She became the youngest attorney her firm’s ever hired and wears the title with pride. She doesn’t have roommates; she rents the apartment with white floors, white walls, white counters and white chairs that she gets all to herself. She rises with the sun like clockwork every morning at six, takes the train to work, and doesn’t see her white apartment again until the sky is dark and all her neighbors’ lights are off.
Life is fine—good, even. Everything is perfectly okay.
Because most of all, Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg is no longer in Uranium City, Saskatchewan.
It was for the best, she knows. At risk of suffocation, her small town’s minuscule city limits closing in on her from all sides from the second she was born to the second she almost died, she left—far, far away, determined to make her destination somewhere different in every conceivable way.
And it was the right thing. Because everything turned out fine, she thinks as she comes home to her nice white apartment.
The pictures are the only decorations she allows herself. They adorn her white wooden bookshelf, opposite the TV in the living room that doesn’t house guests, and they remain the only evidence of her small, small home town that she hasn’t wiped clean. She’s ferried them with her; from dorm room to dorm room, from first apartment to last, always wrapped more carefully than her expensive fine china that she purchased for those guests she’ll never host. They sit on the shelf, tucked in the back but still there.
One picture depicts six teens, each wearing expressions betraying varying degrees of enthusiasm, donning, too, a collection of second-place blue ribbons on their lapels. The next of those same six teens, threaded with tubes, taped with bandages, and held together by casts, yet still, every face is smiling with residual laughter from a foul-tasting joke cracked by the boy in crutches on the left. The last one—which always stands tall and proud on the topmost shelf—is of six freshly-turned adults in cap and gown, with tassels turned and eyes glassy, weeks before Uranium City, Saskatchewan was to become nothing but a distant, unsavory thought.
Ocean is fine as she kicks her door shut, drops her purse by the foyer and passes the photos on her shelf to collapse at her kitchen table with the stack of envelopes she had tucked under an arm, just as she does every third Thursday. She’s fine when she sifts through, setting aside the bills she plans to pay tomorrow—always a week ahead of the due date—and the nth piece of junk mail she’s received from the local superstore in the last month. She’s fine when she pauses, fishing back a letter she’d tossed into the recycle pile too hastily and turning it over once in her hands, the cardstock pristine and textured beneath the pad of her thumb.
Her eyes scan golden calligraphy.
The pleasure of your company is requested to celebrate the union of
Mischa Bachinski and Noel Gruber
Saturday, 3 November
at the Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, AB
“Dope” reception to follow
And Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg is slightly less fine.
* * *
A four-hour flight proved to be a long time to think, and so Ocean didn’t allow herself to.
Shortly after the invitation, she’d called one Noel Gruber to RSVP, and a short “congratulations-yes-I-will-be-attending-your-wedding-that-I-didn’t-know-about” conversation turned into a long “so-what-have-you-been-up-to-oh-wait-I-haven’t-spoken-to-you-in-at-least-six-months” check-in. Ocean is trying to be better about it—she swears—but work is busy, and things slip her mind and get buried at the bottom of her endless to-do lists.
But of course Noel understands. He always picks up the phone anyways.
It was during that phone call, minutes before they hung up, that he made her promise to screen all her work calls and lock herself out of her email for the entire weekend, to which she grudgingly agreed. But she was in the air, which didn’t count. So she just kept up to date on her correspondences, perhaps added a couple hundred words to a case brief until the flight attendant not-so gently reminded her to stow her laptop in her carry-on.
After that, she still had thirty minutes of flight left to go. With no distractions for her consciousness.
Okay, so she thought a little. Married? Seriously? She knew Noel and Mischa were together, of course, but isn’t it a little soon to do that? And had it really been that long? For heaven’s sake, they’re all… It dawned on her, slow and hard, right there in her window seat.
Twenty-seven. They’re all twenty-seven. Vis-à-vis, a perfectly acceptable age to get married.
Effectively blindsided by this revelation, she remained so even as she stepped off the plane and into Calgary International Airport, retrieved her suitcase from baggage claim, and left out the sliding glass doors.
Now, still reeling after a perilous four hours and then some, she stands outside, luggage in hand.
“Under the sign that says WestJet,” she almost yells to be heard over a cornucopia of simultaneous conversations and horns honking.
“Well, you’re going to have to get a little more specific. There’s about seven of those in a one kilometer radius.”
Ocean shifts her shoulder to hold the phone closer to her ear and squints. “It’s gate number…four,” she reads off the sign. Then pauses. “I think. Or maybe six? No, no, four.”
“God, you’re hopeless,” crackles her cell.
She frowns down at it. “What?”
“I’m driving by six right now and I see you. I’m hanging up now.”
Dumbfounded, she takes her phone and stares at the blank screen for half a second before peering up and, lo and behold: running across the street, there she is.
At first, every prior knowledge of social pleasantries in Ocean switches off like her brain is blue-screening. Should she shake her hand? Wave from a comfortable distance? Bow?
But then she ends up having to make none of those choices, because she’s here and she’s thrust into a hug and—it feels right. Ocean takes a breath and embraces her back, arms slotting over her shoulder and around her waist.
“Hello, Penny,” Ocean says, the words like catharsis on her tongue after too long of disuse.
“You need glasses,” says Penny. Her voice is deeper than the last time she heard it.
“No, I don’t,” she protests into her sleeve even though she does.
“You do.”
Penny squeezes her so tight it’s a wonder she doesn’t pop.
It's nice.
After several long, comfortable seconds, Penny breaks apart from her when her street-parked rental car starts getting beeped at. “Hello, Ocean,” she finally says, in a poor imitation of her general intonation as she starts to take her luggage from her.
“Okay, I— do not sound like that! And please give me that. I can get it in the car,” she insists. She tries to grab for her carry-on, but it’s too late.
“Yes, you do,” Penny sings again, already heaving her biggest suitcase into the trunk with that freakishly strong grip of hers, despite Ocean’s best efforts, “and, no, you can’t.”
Ocean sighs. No, she probably can’t.
Defeated, she inserts herself into the passenger side seat as Penny pulls the door shut and gets in beside her. She turns the key in the ignition all the while more bothered honks begin to erupt from behind them.
“I’m going!” she barks out the window, swinging the wheel and pulling out when Ocean’s seatbelt is only halfway on. The car rocks. She instinctively clings for the overhead handle.
“Seatbelt! Seatbelt!” she screeches in what can only be described as a visceral reaction.
She’s met with nothing but an amused snort and a roll of the eyes—if all else is changed, it seems Penny’s flagrant disregard for human safety is still intact, at least. That restitution isn’t a very large help. Penny just turns onto the freeway with such nonchalance it’s frankly impressive.
“Oh, how lovely it is to have you back.”
The words roll around in Ocean’s head as her grip loosens and onset panic dissipates. She properly clicks herself in, but that and concrete beneath tire is the only sound that fills the little sedan, because she can’t quite think of what to say to that. It’s been a really, really long time.
Maybe too long of a time.
“I guess some things never change,” hums Penny when Ocean offers nothing. She glances over at her with a twinkle in her eye.
She cut her hair. It suits her well; it frames her face and bounces youthfully whenever she twists her head. Everything’s so different, it strikes Ocean not for the first time, no matter how much they’ll reminisce and laugh over said things that don’t change. They do.
She forces the thought from her mind.
“I guess not,” Ocean says, trying for a smile.
Penny just grins. She faces the road again and drives.
Ocean picks at a loose thread on her pants before she finds her next words, easy as they should be.
“So, um. How is everyone?”
“Oh, good, good,” Penny says, switching lanes, “they’re good. Noel and Mischa are busy, though, obviously. We got in last night, been hard at work setting stuff up.”
“Work,” Ocean blurts. “I was working. I caught the first flight out I could, but Wednesday I had to—”
“Whoa, whoa, hey, chill!” Penny chuckles a little. “It’s fine, Ocean. You weren’t the only one, anyway.”
The only one? She wants to ask, but she doesn’t. “Oh,” is what she says instead. “Alright.” She shuffles her legs in her seat.
“I’m the honorary maid of honor anyway. It’s kind of my job.”
Ocean raises a brow. “Honorary?”
“Noel and Mischa didn’t want a real wedding party,” Penny explains. “Something about family drama, small wedding, being ‘too gay for this shit,’ whatever. But they still want help, so Ricky and I are filling the void. We’ll all pitch in, and you’ll still do bridesmaid stuff. You’re technically one, anyway.”
Right. Bridesmaid’s duties. She’d studied up on those. “I see. Of course. I knew that.”
“Sure, you did.” Penny takes one hand off the wheel to give her a little nudge over the console. Ocean swallows back a complaint because the move is familiar in the faint concoction of alarm and irritation it brings about. She doesn’t mind feeling it again.
The rest of the hour-and-twenty ride is idle small talk and spaced-out stretches of stilted quiet, after the second of which Penny flicked on the radio to the local pop station, and Ocean tried to overwrite every thought vying for consideration in her mind with the lyrics to songs she’d never heard before until now.
It hurts, a little. At some point in time, without her consent or knowledge, easy companionship apparently became that much harder. Certainly, in the past nine years Ocean has seen Penny, on quick visits and at miniature reunions, texted and called, now and then, but she wasn’t aware there was a quota that had to be met to ensure silences weren’t awkward, or conversation flowed as it should. She certainly thought she’d been meeting it just fine—hadn’t she?
If Ocean knew, maybe she’d have bumped it a little higher on that to-do list she loves to keep.
She feels guilty when the first thing that washes over her as the resort fades into view is relief, but time, she insists to herself—these things get better with time. Penny pulls up to the front and shifts into park, and Ocean tries not to hop out to grab her luggage with too much haste. Still, somehow, Penny beats her to it, already hauling open the trunk by the time she’s rounding the corner.
“I don’t think the suite’s ready”—Penny grunts as she lugs her suitcase in the air—”but I assumed you’d want to get ready for dinner, so you can borrow mine and Ricky’s.”
Ocean feels horribly unhelpful as she takes the handle with a quiet “thank you.” Penny even set her carry-on on top, to make it easier to roll. To-do list, she vows. After this trip, she should really modify that to-do list.
“Oh, wait,” Penny says. She twists around to fish in her back pocket, then produces a key card. “Take my extra. I have to go park the car in the garage, but we’re in 425. You’re a law doctor, or whatever, you can find it.”
Law doctor or whatever? Ocean can’t help but grin. “I might not say it in those exact words, but I don't think there’ll be any problems.”
Penny grins back.
Ocean slips the key in her purse. “Thank you, Penny,” she remembers to mumble again. “For the drive. And everything.”
Ocean’s not sure what response to that she’s expecting, but it’s certainly not the one where she’s drawn into another hug, tight and swift. She freezes, like she’s forgotten how to engage in physical contact for a second, but it comes back to her. Ocean gives a tentative squeeze in turn.
Then Penny pulls away, as if everything were perfectly normal and well and good. “No problem,” she says, with a barely perceptible shrug of her shoulders. “See you at dinner tonight. Don’t make too much of a mess in our bathroom.”
Ocean frowns. “What? Of course not! I’m not messy!”
Penny gives her a look, like that was the joke, genius.
“Oh. Oh, right, alright. See you, um, at dinner.”
She throws one last wave out the window before driving off, and Ocean takes that as her cue to check in.
The front desk echoes much of the same sentiments on her room, which she assures is perfectly fine. 425 is found without incident and now here she is, having shrugged out of her pants and tee and into a bluish dress that floats down to her knees, standing in front of the bathroom mirror in a silence that has no radio to fill it.
Her mind’s whirling—because Ocean made the grave mistake of leaving it to its own devices—with the second pass of a straightener through her hair, and unexpected jitters cause her hand to shake. She hisses at an iron-induced first-degree burn on the tip of her ear as a result and nearly drops the death wand entirely. After that scare, she forces herself to pause. Ocean sucks in a breath in an attempt at some semblance of calm—and blister prevention.
The thought of seeing everyone together again is daunting, and exciting, and nauseating, and strange, and great, horrifying, and about a million other things. Of course, as she has with Penny, she’s stopped by for visits with the now-disbanded St. Cassian Chamber Choir’s members; checked in with phone calls; even messaged in the group chat that pings her phone with a nostalgic photo every couple of months, but it’s been a while—a very, very long while—since they’ve all been together like this.
Ocean pauses her straightening. All. All of them.
Does that really mean what she thinks it might?
She forces herself to physically shake the thought from her mind, only she forgets that she’s still holding an iron in one hand and gives herself another searing sting on the back of her neck.
“Fffff—uther…”
Ocean slams the stupid thing down on the counter, leans over the sink, and allows herself—just this once—to say something unsavory.
One moment of shame later, she unplugs the straightener and leaves for dinner.
The restaurant is connected to the resort, and it’s a short enough walk to justify wearing heels. She slips past tables to find the one on the terrace outside that Noel said he’d reserved in an atmosphere that bridges the gap between fancy and casual just enough so she feels very subtly overdressed. The thought doesn’t help. With each step she takes Ocean doesn’t notice her heart has started pounding faster and her legs feel like she’s just come off the Tilt-A-Whirl until there’s a spasmodic hummingbird trapped in her ribcage and she nearly eats it when she waltzes down a set of stairs.
Why, why, why? a part of her wants to ask herself. They’re just people. From high school. Friends. That you’ve seen.
Except, there, she stops. Most of them. She’s seen most of them.
All. All of them. She hasn’t seen all of them. Is she going to see all of them? The table on the terrace comes into view.
Ocean holds her breath.
When she looks up and sees only four of the faces from her picture frames staring back at her, she remembers she lied.
She doesn't own three photos.
Because there's one more, on her nightstand; a macaroni-studded, puffy paint frame with one more picture. Of two little girls, standing in mulch with the colorful blurs of monkey bars and swing sets bleeding in the background, and a pair of toothy beams and joined hands in the foreground, at the very center.
It’s placed in a way that ensures she sees it, every night as she’s getting ready to go to bed, and it smiles at her in a way that sends pangs through her chest, without fail, every time, so she always falls asleep feeling heavy. It's gotten to the point where she continues to tell herself she’ll finally stow the thing away in a drawer, or walk it to the storage unit where the rest of her family photos remain in boxes, or even just move it there with the rest of her pictures on her white wooden bookshelf.
But she never does.
“Ocean!”
The four faces turn in unison. The way they each light up is consolation, and a blanket of sorts over the little monster in her brain she didn’t know had a home there whispering, what if they hate my guts now? What if they don’t want to see me? They don’t, and they do, she hopes, probably, is what this is telling her. She tries for a smile in turn.
“Hi. I—”
Before she can attempt to navigate the social mindfield of seeing Noel, Mischa, Penny, and Ricky together in the same room for the first time since Thanksgiving circa sophomore year of undergrad, she’s rescued by Noel, in one swift movement, pushing up and out of his seat and wrapping his arms around her.
It takes her by surprise to a degree she’s not expecting, and she blinks away a prickle or two in her eye before she hugs him back. He’s soft and solid—like he’s always been—and it hits her as she holds him and he holds her that he’s getting married. She tries to process that, for the umpteenth time.
”Congratulations,” she musters, simultaneously as it’s hitting her yet again.
Noel finally pulls away. “You wretched witch!” is the first thing out of his mouth. “What took you so long?”
“I, I had to work Wednesday night, we just had this huge case, I couldn’t— Wretched witch?” She darts to give him a reflexive slap on the arm and, maybe it really has been too long, because he doesn’t see it coming and it actually connects. “Have some respect!” she huffs. “I flew four hours to be here. For you.”
He rolls his eyes, but there’s love in it. She thinks. “Go home, then.”
"Now, listen here, Morticia—"
“Okay, that’s enough!” Penny cuts in. She, too, gets up out of her seat to give another quick squeeze, and Mischa and Ricky follow suit.
“It is good to see you, a-hole! For our celebration!”
Welcome back, witch.
Yet even as Ocean exchanges companionable pleasantries and loose embraces with everyone—except, not everyone—one by one, she tries to bat down the more-bitter-than-sweetness she doesn’t want to name that threatens to spill from her. Busy, she tells herself, to try and placate that nameless feeling. They’re all just so busy these days. At least, that’s what she hears.
Making a conscious effort to clear her mind, Ocean takes her seat at the end, by Ricky, and food, drink, and conversation begin to flow. Her ASL is rusty with disuse—she used to be able to sign along with what she was saying and remember tough vocabulary on the fly, thanks to hours of studying after the crash—but it’s still functional enough in her mind to process Ricky’s signing some story about the cats at home, though she misses a word here and there. There are more branching tangents after that—loud ones, courtesy of Mischa and his loose lips after a few cocktails Noel told him to try—and the mood is light.
Or, it should be.
Even with their voices and hands filling the night air, Ocean tries not to think of how empty the table feels.
“So, how’s married life?”
The question jolts her back into the present. Her brow furrows. They’re not married yet, she almost says, until she realizes it was Noel who asked.
Blissful, signs Ricky.
“It’s the shit,” agrees Penny.
“What?” blurts Ocean.
It slips out before she can shove a cork in it. Four heads crank to face her.
Mischa throws back another sip before talking. “What is what?” he says with glass in hand, fixing her with a more confused look than she’s pretty sure she’s ever seen on him.
Ocean has to take a beat to gather herself. She shifts in her chair to face the couple in question. “You eloped?” comes out in a splutter.
Penny chuckles, a little strangely. “Uh, yeah.”
Simultaneously, she presents her left hand with Ricky’s and, there are wedding bands. On the ring finger. Where rings are supposed to go.
Ocean looks closer. They’re plain silver, with a belt of purple and holographic “stars” encased in resin around the middle that makes it look like they harnessed a chunk of the night sky and trapped it inside.
Epic, right? Ricky uses his wedding ring-hand to sign. Because he’s married. To Penny.
“It’s— great,” says Ocean, signing along except in the whirlwind of her brain she’s pretty sure she forms THANK YOU instead of GOOD. Nor can she remember the motion for GREAT. “I mean, I didn’t know.”
Noel huffs out a laugh. “What, it never came up in the car?”
Hot shame trickles down her neck. She didn’t even think to ask how their relationship had been going—or about their supposed two years-long engagement that wasn’t so long after all. Has she really been so distant? She stops—no. No, of course not. A slip of the mind, that’s all. “I, I just assumed…”
“It’s fine,” Penny says, even though it’s not. She waves an arm and offers her a comforting grin. It doesn’t help.
Suddenly, a slam on the table makes everyone jump.
Mischa, sufficiently tipsy, stands straight up. “I am marrying Noel Gruber!” he announces, to an empty terrace. “We will also have wedding rings!”
Tension around the table effectively dissolved, Noel gently takes his fiancé by the sleeve and guides him back into his chair. “Okay, lover boy, no more vodka martinis for you.”
This prompts Ricky to bring up what Drunk Mischa Protocol should be for the reception, and more wedding planning, and more reminiscing, and more digressions and asides from whatever the original subject was, and conversation has awkwardly resumed. Entrées arrive at some point, too, and everyone digs in. Ocean pecks at the fish she doesn’t remember ordering, and feels herself slipping away.
Surrounded by friends for what has to be the first time since she graduated with that degree and landed that job and moved into that white apartment, Ocean should feel fine. And she is, completely; happy to see them, happy for them.
But there’s this strange loss—the one that hasn’t invaded her mind since she stopped letting it however many years ago now. It’s like there’s a hole around this dinner table on the terrace—one that should be filled with snorting laughter that bubbles like soda and inappropriate jokes that made her face hot with fluster and a soft, full grin that always, always made certain her heart was at home. And also, maybe, a pair of gentle hands which perpetually seemed to harbor a comforting heat; that used to sizzle against and melt her own icy fingers; that balanced her scales and reminded her with each easy squeeze under the table to take a deep breath every now and again.
She could really use those hands right now.
But no, no—Ocean is fine. Ocean is here, present, in the moment, for her friends and their wedding. And they’re gay, so it’s sure to be fun, and great, and she’s here for them. For them. Not to dawdle around allowing her brain to indulge in some pointless schoolgirl nostalgia, or to ponder for too long the inexplicable loss.
So she shoves it all back down wherever it came from; forces herself to pick up the fork and tune into whatever everyone’s chuckling about now, coming in with interjections and laughter where socially appropriate, and it all feels fine. Because it is.
Dinner ends and is replaced with dessert. It’s some kind of chocolate creation that Noel goes crazy for, and he graciously shares with the rest of the table. Mischa gets some on the front of his button-down; Ricky gives a spoonful to Penny in a rare affectionate display that Ocean can’t bring herself to watch; Noel is trying to enjoy his favorite flavor all the while balancing a now nearly asleep Mischa on his shoulder. Ocean vows to give the man a stern talking to and a booze chart she keeps in her purse pre-reception.
At a quick glance through the windows, the patrons inside are mostly gone. The sky has been black for a while, voices have grown soft, and the final nail in the coffin for the evening is the check coming around. It’s split without question, and Noel, with his husband-to-be hanging off his neck like a sloth, bids good night on behalf of them both before heading in the opposite direction.
“Your room’s probably ready,” says Penny, pushing her chair in and slinging her bag over one shoulder. “Wanna go grab your stuff from ours?”
“Please.”
425 is reached on legs that feel far more sluggish than Ocean previously anticipated they were. She’s handed her luggage, apologizes for leaving the straightener out after her debacle (the consequences of which still prickle annoyingly on her skin), finishes double-checking all her belongings.
“Okay, well,” starts Penny, leaning against the doorframe, “that’s it. You need help getting it to your room?”
“No, no. I’ll be fine.” Ocean waves her off. “Thanks, though. And, um…”
Now, she fiddles with the corner of her dress. This is unexpectedly hard.
“Penny, Ricky, I’m sorry,” she says in one long breath, like hot air spilling from a balloon. “I thought I asked— Well, I, I meant to— It’s just, I had assumed that—”
“Ocean! Shhhhut up. Shush.”
Her mouth snaps shut.
Penny puts a hand—her left hand, the one with the wedding ring—on her shoulder. “It’s fine. Really,” she insists, and Ricky shrugs in agreement. “Stuff like that just sorta happens, when you’re… It just sorta happens. Okay?”
When you're what? Happens when she's what? Ocean’s not sure whether she does or doesn’t wish she finished her sentence.
“Okay,” she finally says, even though she still feels a little like it’s not. She clears her throat. “Alright. Well, then, um, congratulations, and all that. And good…good night.”
“Thanks, Ocean. See you tomorrow.”
Night, witch.
Halfway down the hall, the door clicks shut.
One elevator ride and several left turns later, Ocean comes to a halt in front of 303—her home for the next four nights. Groggily, she slaps her key card to the reader and finagles the door open with one hand, dragging her suitcase behind her in the other.
The second she steps over the threshold: It’s big. Far bigger than she thought it might be, for what she’d ended up chipping in, but she has neither the time nor energy to ponder this. She’ll just have to remember to drop Noel her thanks. Ocean kicks off her shoes in the miniature foyer before the welcome packet on the kitchenette table catches her eye. She creeps closer to take a quick look. It’s while her eyes are skimming the card thanking her for her stay and informing her of the amenities that she realizes just how dry her mouth is, and she abandons it to move to the fridge for a complimentary water.
When the door swings open, however, there are two bottles—one of which is unopened, but the other only half-full. Ocean bristles. The room was late and they still couldn’t have bothered to clean it out properly? Her teeth absently chewing them reminds her how severely her lips are chapped, though. She’ll simply have to put off a disgruntled call to the front desk until tomorrow.
Gingerly, Ocean grabs for the second bottle. The seal’s unbroken, so probably no cyanide. She’s about ninety-five percent sure. Taking a risk, she downs a quarter of the bottle—which decidedly doesn’t taste like poison—caps it off, places it on the opposite shelf to minimize risk of a potentially fatal mix-up, and shuts the door.
With a yawn, Ocean feels sleep beginning to tug ever more insistently at her bones, motion sickness tablets at last catching up to her. She starts to wheel her suitcase towards the bedroom—gets the wheel caught on the edge of the couch at least twice in her disarray—and turns the knob, about ready to make a beeline straight for the queen-sized mattress and simply crash right then and there.
But in the doorway, she freezes.
She’s not alone.
There’s—someone. Someone there. For the briefest of seconds, she panics—her fingers twitch for her phone, emergency services on speed dial—but then she sees the someone, and it all stops. Someone leaning over the side of the bed—one of the beds, because there’s two of them—closest the wall, and she knows.
She would know that someone anywhere, in a crowd of millions.
“Connie?” Ocean breathes.
Constance Blackwood whips around, eyes wide, nearly jumping a foot in the air. About a thousand different things play across her face at once, and Ocean can’t make out a single one—not even the expression she eventually, after seconds that feel like years, settles on. Similarly, a thousand different things vie to leave Ocean’s mouth—a how are you, a you look great, an it’s been a while—anything even remotely coherent or appropriate for the situation she now finds herself in.
But then Constance opens her mouth.
One word comes out, low and simple.
“What?”