CHAPTER 1
Audrey
I learned early what happens when you need someone.
You call, and they don't answer. You call again. You sit in the kitchen at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday with the phone on the counter and your daughter asleep upstairs. You wait for a man to call you back, and he doesn't call you back. You go to bed. In the morning, you set the table for two because you haven't learned yet that he's never coming home.
My mother set that table for three years after my father left. I ate across from an empty chair until I was nine years old, and she finally took it away.
I didn't need anyone. I'd made sure of that. Load-bearing walls, poured foundation, a life built from the ground up to never require a man to hold it in place. Nursing over business school. L&D over the residency my mother wanted for me. Hartsdale General over every hospital where the Callahan name could have opened a door, because those doors belonged to my mother's blueprint, not mine.
Every decision, every year, every morning I woke up alone in an apartment I paid for with money I earned was proof that the system worked. That I was not my mother.
My best friend was getting married in the morning. I was standing in the bungalow on Maple Avenue with a glass of water in my hand, watching the rehearsal dinner wind down around me. Astrid was across the room, leaning into Easton, laughing at something he said with her whole face, and I felt it—the pull, small and low in my chest, the one I never had to go looking for because it never left. It sat there all the time, behind the architecture, tapping on the glass.
I set the water down and went back to work.
The room needed me. I'd been running it without stopping since four o'clock. Astrid's mother had been crying since the first toast and showed no signs of letting up. Caldwell cornered me twice about a suit jacket problem I'd already fixed. The caterer ran out of the rosemary focaccia and looked at me like I’d personally eaten it. I handled each one the same way I handled everything: moving, smiling, keeping the machinery invisible so the night could feel effortless for the people inside it.
I was good at this. I was always good at this. Twelve hours at Hartsdale General today, a labor and delivery shift that ran long because a first-time mother needed someone to hold her hand through the seventh hour, and I was the one who stayed.
I drove straight here after. Changed in Astrid's bathroom, lipstick on in her mirror, hair pinned and left. My scrubs were in a bag by the back door. My heels were on. If the night required a version of me who hadn't been awake since four in the morning, that version showed up, because she always showed up. That was her whole job.
"Audrey." Astrid's mother caught my elbow near the kitchen, her eyes wet and pink. "The photographer tomorrow, does she know about the light in the garden at four?"
"She knows," I said. "I sent her three reference photos and a compass heading. She'll be there at three to test it."
Astrid's mother blinked, then squeezed my arm. "You're a miracle."
"I'm a maid of honor who doesn't leave things to chance. Go sit down, Mrs. Matthews. There's a whole tray of mini eclairs on the far table that would love to comfort you right now."
She went. I picked up an abandoned plate from the side table, moved a vase two inches to the left because it was blocking the path to the bathroom, and checked the time on my phone.
That was when I looked up and saw Duke Rhodes.
He was leaning against the fireplace mantel with a beer in his hand, telling a story to three people who were already laughing before he got to the good part. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. His collar was open one button too far. His hair was curling at the ends because he hadn't cut it in too long, and the dimple on his left side was out. I was very tired of watching that dimple.
He caught someone's name wrong on purpose and corrected himself with a grin that made the whole group laugh harder.
Three months of planning this wedding beside this man, and I'd catalogued more of him than I wanted to admit. He argued about everything. He had opinions about font sizes, playlist pacing, and where to seat the groomsmen. He told me the rehearsal dinner music was "a little aggressive" and then sent me a counter-playlist that was ninety minutes of dad rock and one Dolly Parton song. When I moved the groomsmen's table to the east side of the garden for the afternoon light, he moved it back because "the guys want to be near the bar." I moved it again. He looked at me with that grin and said, "Noted, Callahan."
I'd filed things about him I never asked to file. His hands, when he made a point, were used like punctuation. The fact that he could read a room from the doorway and decide what it needed before anyone asked. I didn't want to notice. I noticed anyway.
My phone buzzed on the side table. I picked it up. Mom.
Colleen
Breakfast Sunday? I'll make the frittata.
I read it and didn't reply. I put the phone face down on the table and went to check on the wine.
Some invitations arrive with instructions folded inside. My mother's frittata was one. Sunday breakfast at Callahan House meant the linen napkins, the good plates, and a conversation she'd already decided we were having before I sat down. I loved my mother. I also knew her weight, and tonight I was carrying enough of my own.
I found the extra bottles in the kitchen, opened a white, and was carrying it back to the living room when Duke appeared at my shoulder.
"Callahan."
"Rhodes."
