Chapter Thirty-Five

 

Anna frowns and looks at the table in front of her. Is she supposed to make choices about the wedding, or is this some kind of trick?

She'd go with the green. That part's easy. Green looks more muted. It looks better. No problem. It's only an off-white green, after all. 'Mint,' she thinks.

But there's no reason to assume that is what she's here for. She's never been asked to choose anything for Mitch before, and the odds that he would start asking her to do things like that, completely out of the blue…

Mitch was capable of surprises. He was capable of almost anything he set his mind to, and if he wanted to let her choose, then he would let her choose. That wasn't going to happen, though. Not in this lifetime.

So why had they brought it to her as if it were a choice somehow? They must know how he is, too. There's no way that someone could spend any great deal of time with Mitch Queen and not come away with the impression that he's a man who makes his own decisions, not sending away for others' decisions.

What this really feels like is a test, and it's a test that she can't pass. Not really.

If she chooses green, she won't be fitting into his plan. Her natural reaction is always the wrong one. That's the first thing she learned. Mitch likes earth tones, so green wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility, but the brown…

He'd have gone for the brown in a heartbeat. Faster than she'd go for the green, and she'd liked that green from the moment she saw it.

The problem was, she couldn't choose the brown, either. Because then he'd get her alone at some point, and he'd tell her how he just wanted her input on the colored trim for the cake because he'd wanted to have someone on the outside making decisions.

To have her input. And if she chose what she thought he would choose, then it defeated the whole exercise. She'd be stuck on the defensive, insisting that, no, she really liked the brown.

When, of course, she'd liked the green. She'd have picked the green if it didn't mean a hissy-fit from Mitch about how she was ruining their beautiful wedding.

Anna takes a deep breath and tries to decide which lecture she wants to hear more. The baby fusses in the other room, a reminder of what her real priorities are supposed to be. Ava's hungry, and it's past time to feed her.

"Um. The green."

The ladies who are supposed to be her bridesmaids smile like they're hosts of a T.V. game show and they're about to tell her what's behind Door #2. They close up the book.

"Excellent choice. We'll get back to it."

"Yeah. I hear Ava calling, so I'd better—"

"Go on," they say.

It doesn't feel like an act of rebellion, choosing the color she likes over what Mitchell would like. Maybe it should have. Maybe it should have represented something to her, the rejection of his tastes over her own, or something like that.

Maybe she should have seen it all as some sort of big battle to carve out a space for herself. But she doesn't.

There's no carving space with Mitch. He's less like marble and more like hard iron. You might be able to beat it into shape—his father had, in the few places that mattered to the elder Queen—but you couldn't just push a chisel through.

She didn't see it as any of those things. She'd picked because she was in a hurry, and because the lecture she was going to get later didn't matter as much as her daughter. Nothing did.

Not the lecture, not how she'd feel about it. She'd have to learn how to ignore them. That was just how it would have to be. Ignore Mitchell altogether, and just focus on the baby.

Anna was sure that eventually, he would come to her with more information on these so-called bridesmaids, and he'd tell her all about what he'd done. What he intended to keep right on doing. They'd reach some sort of understanding.

It would be, for all intents and purposes, completely painless for both of them. Because the truth was that the marriage didn't matter, either. The only thing that mattered was Ava.

The only thing that mattered was Ava, and nothing else—not 'the right thing,' not 'love,' not 'justice'—none of it was going to get in the way of raising her daughter.

Anna slips a little quilt out of the chest in the corner. It's almost hard to notice it. It was a wonderful idea to put them around the house. They provide an excellent opportunity for her to feed Ava without embarrassing Mitch and having to endure another nagging lecture.

She slips the blanket over her shoulder and unbuttons her blouse a little way, enough to free a breast, and a moment later Ava's drinking her fill.

Anna lays back against the sofa, keeping Ava cradled against her as she feeds. A voice comes in from somewhere in the house. The entire ventilation system is connected, and the walls vary wildly in thickness.

Some, you would struggle to hear someone making violent sex on the other side, no matter how loudly they voiced their pleasure.

Others, you could barely have a whispered conversation without the entire house hearing. And it seems that whoever was talking had wandered into one of those rooms, because Anna could hear them plainly, though they must have believed themselves to be speaking in strict confidence.

"The preparations, they're made?" A woman's voice.

"Suppose they are," the man growls. "Where's my money?"

"You'll get your money when the woman's back out of the picture. Just like he said you would."

"Well, maybe I don't trust him. Maybe I want something up front."

"There's no money up front. You knew that."

They're speaking in hushed voices. It can't have been very far, but with the labyrinthine ventilation system… it could have been the next room over, or perhaps the one above or below. Impossible to say with certainty.

Anna doesn't want to listen, but now her curiosity is piqued. Her ears strain to catch any hint of noise.

"I didn't say, 'I want money up front,' did I?"

The woman's voice suggests that she's very amused by his suggestion, whatever it might be. Anna has an idea of what he's talking about, though, and evidently so does the woman, whose voice Anna can't recognize.

"No," she pauses and sounds as if she's laughing just a little bit. "I suppose you didn't."

The voices go quiet, now. They don't say another word, but it's not hard to imagine that they likely haven't left wherever they were. If he got his way—a groan carries itself up. Barely audible over the noises of the house.

It seems, then, that he did. Anna's cheeks flush. It's tempting to think that they were talking about her. It's equally tempting to try to tell herself that she's being melodramatic, that she's just reading into things.

She might be, after all. There's plenty to read into.

But then again, she may not be making things up at all. Out of the picture, though… that sounded ominous. She doesn't like ominous. Not when it comes to her future, and when it comes to her baby.

Because even if it were for Ava's own good, she's not going to let herself be separated from her daughter again. Not in a thousand years.