I couldn’t stand the pity in Peter’s eyes.
I’d told myself he and I would talk after the announcement, once we had the truth between us. But I hadn’t prepared for the truth to be this.
Our tense meal was a mockery of the festive night I’d envisioned, the ball a total farce. But Peter was well liked, and his parents were respected. His father was a captain in the military, his mother a talented florist.
So I contained myself.
Besides, everyone was watching to see how I’d react.
We sat side by side through dinner, hardly speaking. I couldn’t produce any words; he could only produce two.
I’m sorry, he said, again and again, in whispers and with looks.
I’d been a fool to choose him.
I’d never risked telling Peter how I felt, always afraid of his reply. Proposing via official channels had felt safer, somehow.
Why hadn’t I seen that public rejection would only hurt worse?
What, I wondered, makes one person want another?
I knew why I wanted Peter. I had speculated for so long on whether he cared for me, carried the hope of him for so long, I hardly knew how to break it apart and examine it.
The only thing left to wonder now was what made a person stare into a proffered heart and say, No, no, thank you, not for me.
After dinner, Peter’s parents left the hall, making quiet, polite excuses. I met Peter’s eyes, searching for an answer, trying to trace the path to destruction my hopes had taken.
A flush crept up Peter’s light brown skin, and as he dipped his head slightly, his laurel wreath slipped a little in his tight black curls. He stood wooden and awkward, fingers clasped behind his back, shoulders rounded. A mere two feet away and a world apart from me.
The gap between us taunted me.
I thought I understood him. I thought we were friends, that I could ask him things. But his refusal had stolen my voice. I couldn’t ask the only questions left to me.
And the person in front of me was a boy I barely knew.
“I just wish you’d told me when it was just the two of us,” I whispered, staring at my shoes.
Peter hitched up a lean shoulder, his light brown eyes baffled. “The thing is, it never was just the two of us, Selah.”
The words stung me.
They didn’t merely remind me that I’d been avoiding Peter these past few weeks. They meant he’d been totally blindsided by my proposal.
I saw now I’d been hoping he’d answer my question without my having to be brave enough to speak the words. But he’d never even suspected that I would ask. He had never thought of me as I had endlessly imagined him.
And perhaps, more than that, I’d never known him as truly as I’d wished I did. I’d been hoping, not believing. Imagining, not knowing.
I dropped my eyes, avoiding his confused gaze, taking in safer pieces of the boy I adored. Rounded shoulders. The soft shell of his ear beneath his laurel wreath. His hands, clean and slim and white-knuckled with disquiet beneath their dark complexion.
I would never hold them. And they would never hold me.
Peter disappeared through the trees, and I watched him walk away.
Then Daddy crouched beside me, eyes gentle in his thin, drawn face, and took my hand.
We couldn’t truly get lost among those milling through the damp, green hall, but as the candles burned low in the trees, the party had seemed to move on and forget me. My father gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, sweet girl.”
My parents’ love story was one I knew well. My grandparents had been less than amused when the wealthy Savannah princess they’d invited to visit brought a sharp-tongued nun along for company. But that nun had become my godmother, and Althea told me Daddy fell for the girl from Savannah the first time she smiled at him.
Momma had been his solid ground, and he’d been her open sky. I wondered if anyone would ever see me that way.
I’d been blind enough to think Peter had.
“Is something wrong with me?” I finally asked.
“Oh, honey.” Daddy stopped me, hands on my shoulders, weary eyes serious. “You are everything you ought to be. Everything, and more. And that’s nothing compared to what I know you’ll be someday.”
He pulled me into a hug, and I wanted to weep against his chest like a child at the sharpness of his ribs. “Daddy, are you feeling all right?” His too-large jacket muffled my words. “You look like Alessandra’s got you on a diet.”
He chuckled. “Don’t you fret about me. I’m just getting old, that’s all. Don’t need as much to keep me going anymore, since you do all the work around here these days.”
I huffed a weak laugh. “You aren’t old. And don’t be silly. You do a lot.”
“Well, I ain’t young.” He sighed. “You hear all that racket last night?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe I’m imagining it. But I don’t think I’ve slept through the night in weeks. Always seems to be so much noise.” Daddy pressed bony fingers to his temples. The band had struck up again, a boisterous song with a heavy drumbeat. “I thought it would help.”
I glanced back to my father, unhappiness curdling in my stomach. “You thought what would help?”
But Daddy wasn’t listening, and now people were drawing near us—Alessandra, his physicians, members of the court. I felt the private haven we’d shared for a few precious moments collapsing.
Other people needed his time. Mine was up.
But the sound of my name halted my retreat.
“Selah!” My stepmother shook her head, lips pursed. “The evening isn’t over.”
Daddy cast me a worried glance. “Alessandra, I think the ball can spare her.”
“But the Council can’t.” Her tone was utterly bare of sympathy. My father’s chest and shoulders deflated. “The Roots—now.”
“W-wait—” I stammered. But Dr. Gold and Dr. Pugh descended as I spoke. No one heard me excuse myself as Dr. Pugh began rambling about how much better Daddy was looking.
“Clearly, the treatment is working,” said Dr. Pugh. Dr. Gold nodded brightly, an attempt at a smile stretched across his kind, young face.
Daddy had told me not to worry. It didn’t look as if his doctors were of the same mind.
I wanted to press him, to pinpoint when he’d become this worn, fragile thing, like a page in an old book.
But no one looked at me. I had no one left to question. I could only obey.
The glass decorations in the branches overhead blurred in my vision as I walked away. And as I pushed through a streaming willow’s branches and out the side door, I finally began to cry.
Tears streamed down my face as I shuffled down one, two, three flights of comfortless marble stairs, empty but for the echoes of the party. I pressed my back to the cold wall of the bottom landing and fished in the pocket of my gown until the wooden beads of my rosary whispered against my fingers.
One by one, I choked out the string of prayers Momma taught me when I was a little girl. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Hail Mary, full of grace. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. The beautiful words eased my blistering pain, smoothing me out and untangling my snarled nerves.
But as my tears subsided, I caught the sounds of quiet conversation—of talk not coming from the ball upstairs. Vague uneasiness rose inside me again, sickly and clinging like fog. The Council meeting in the Roots had already begun.