Chapter Eleven

Lainey

Royce Saunders sits on the bench opposite mine, alone. I sit beside my grandmother. We’re having afternoon tea in the backyard garden, and the unbearable silence is threatening to send me over the edge. He’s only been here twenty minutes and it seems like we’ve exhausted every line of questioning.

The Red Sox are doing well this season, the rain clouds will part, winter might be a tough one this year, and no, he wouldn’t like another cookie.

Royce is in his early forties and bald, though in that handsome way some men can pull off. His facial hair helps to sharpen his otherwise baby face. He dresses stylishly and is incredibly polite. There’s a lot to admire about him: his easy smile, his steady demeanor, the kindness he shares equally among anyone. A stranger, a driver, a state official—he treats them all the same.

He comes from a well-established Boston family and his money is old, though he doesn’t let that stop him from running a successful consulting firm. I’m not sure exactly who he consults. I know it’s something to do with technology and politics, though how the two combine I can’t be totally sure. It’s embarrassing, I know, to not know what your fiancé does for a living.

My grandmother was the one to set up the match. On my twenty-fifth birthday, in lieu of a gift, she called me in for breakfast in the dining room and explained that she had something she wished to discuss with me.

My betrothal.

At the precise moment she said those heavy words, I was in the process of feeding myself a bite of eggs Benedict. I was startled, as anyone might be, and ended up missing my mouth entirely. Canadian bacon, poached egg, and hollandaise sauce rained down onto her prized 17^th-century Persian carpet, and I gasped in horror. There was a big to-do. Three maids were on their hands and knees, combing over that carpet with gloved hands, ensuring they got every last drop (not that it mattered—my grandmother sent it out to be professionally cleaned later that day), and by the time the ordeal was all over, it seemed like our conversation was of little importance. She sat me back down and sighed as if she was sick of having to deal with me for the day.

My grandmother can be like that, and it’s not just because of her age. She’s an introvert and gets overstimulated easily. She hates crowds and disorder, and you can imagine how fun it was to be a small girl living in her house. My toys had to be cleaned up and neatly organized before I was allowed to come down for dinner. She had this sprawling three-story dollhouse commissioned for my playroom, but I was never allowed to touch it because she said it was too much of a hassle to “put back to rights”.

The betrothal already seemed set in stone.

“He’s a fine man,” she told me, staring at the carpet with her sharp brown eyes, looking for residual stains. “His parents have an impeccable reputation. I’ve dug deep and found not even a speck of anything untoward about them. Generations you can go back—the lineage holds.”