“Lax loves a good party,” came Freddie’s voice from off camera.

“And why one, when there can be ten,” Daphne joked.

“When will you both come back here so I can hug you?” I asked.

“Daphne’s here for the foreseeable,” Freddie said. “But I’ll darken your doorstep on Wednesday. I’ll be going back and forth for ages, trying to reassure all my patronages that I’m not pissing off into the sunset forever.”

“No one thinks that,” I said.

“From your lips to Knickers’s ears,” Freddie said, then he caught himself, and blanched. “Please tell me he’s not standing off camera.”

“He is downstairs knitting something undefinable that you should both hope is not a wedding present,” I said. “But if he knew you were going to call, he’d have come up to say hi. We’re both impatient to celebrate with you properly.”

Nick had actually started to walk in, and then walked right back out when he heard Freddie’s voice. I’d let him. His Aggressively Pleasant face had been getting a workout lately and it was due for a rest; he’d been feeling his brother’s daily absence even more keenly than when Freddie was in the military—this was less deadly, yes, but potentially more permanent. But after a few perambulations around our garden the day Freddie told us, he’d gone in search of his brother to express his support and erase some of the sting of his first reaction. Especially in light of Freddie’s huge favor to us.

“The last time I buried my real feelings about Freddie’s decision making, it poisoned us all,” he’d told me. “I’m glad I was honest. But now I have to make sure he still feels his family in his life, so that no matter what happens, he knows he’ll always have a home here.” He’d shot me a helpless look. “If you’d told me as a boy that my relationship with Freddie would be the one that demanded the toughest balancing act, I’d have told you to get stuffed.”

Daphne brought me back into the present. “Have you had your appointment yet, Bex?” she asked, affixing a look of casual interest onto her face. “That’s today, yes?”

“Ah, yes, it’s, um, in about twenty minutes actually,” I said. “I didn’t know you—”

“Of course he told me,” she said. “We’re getting married. No secrets.”

I opened my mouth to let fly a sarcastic rejoinder, but thought better of it, and bit it back. Daphne wasn’t a sarcastic person. She couldn’t have meant that as a jab at my own premarital skeletons. Her tone was pleasant, but I could see tension at the edges of her eyes, and then I felt guilty. This situation was emotionally complicated for her, too.

“I’ll let you both know how it goes,” I said. “Talk to you soon. Have fun today.”

I disconnected the call and stared at the blank, dark screen, in which I could see a faint reflection of myself. It reminded me of the windows that night at The Shard, when Eleanor had first fallen ill, and again on the train, where I had stood staring fruitlessly out into the growing dark as hidden scenery sped past us. So much gazing into the unknown.