Liv
The invitation said black tie. That’s why I’m sitting in the back of a black sedan being chauffeured to a charity dinner in my mom’s forest-green vintage Dior. The long sleeves are to help keep the cold night air off my skin. The neck-line made to look like gathered lapels that criss-cross over my chest and down around my waist. Modest, but sleek and classically elegant. I used to love when my mother wore this dress. I’d hoped it would make me feel better about tonight when I shrugged it on over my head and zipped it up the side, but really, I just feel anxious.
“It’s just a dinner,” Cole, my little brother, had exclaimed for the hundredth time when I asked him a question about it. The same answer he gave me to every question I’d asked.
What charity?
What is a reasonable time to leave?
Is there a set menu?
Is anyone we know going?
The driver looks at me in the rear-view mirror but I pretend not to notice and keep my eyes fixed on the street passing by beyond the window.
I thought Cole was coming too, normally we do these things together since our parents died. Trying to keep our faces, and our family name, in front of the right people. Our uncle ran the family company while I raised Cole. Then as soon as he turnedtwenty-one, he was given full reign of the business, with little to no experience, and promptly began driving it into the ground.
At least tonight I’ll be able to talk to people, real human adults, about something other than family strife, and get more than short, curt answers in response.
The door comes to a stop in front of two large gates that roll open steadily. It’s unusual to attend a charity function at a private residence, but I suppose they could be trying to save money by not hosting it at a high-end hotel. Cole mentioned there was a steep table fee and I wonder why he bothered when money is hemorrhaging from the business, but then I suppose it’s deductible.
I step out of the car when the driver opens my door, and nod a politethank youto him. I think about Cole again, how he didn’t join me tonight.Optics,he'd said.Looks better if you arrive alone.I should have asked what that meant. I didn't, because asking Cole things lately tends to end with him getting that tight, evasive look around his mouth, the one he's had since our parents died.
The doors open as I climb the steps and a hallway lined with gold sconces and a marble floor so clean it looks like ice, stretch out before me. My stomach is a fist. I tell myself it's nerves about representing the family at a charity function I know nothing about, that I'll smile and make small talk and leave early, and Cole will owe me for this the way he owes me for a hundred other favors he's never once paid back.
A woman in a sleek black dress checks names off a tablet at the door. She finds mine, glances up, and something flickers across her face before she smooths it away.
"Miss Alivia Beckett," she says. "Yes. Right this way."
She doesn't hand me a glass of champagne or a program for the evening. She hands me a folder.
I stop walking. "What is this?"
"Your portfolio, Miss Beckett." She says it like I should already understand the word. "For the gentlemen this evening. Please check the information is accurate and let me know of any inaccuracies as soon as possible."
I open it before I can think better of it, and the bottom drops out of my night in one clean, vertical fall.
It's me. Pages of me. A photograph from my college graduation, my full name typed beneath it, my age, my education, a line about my "family background" that makes no mention of dead parents or a brother who can't hold his own in the boardroom, only the Beckett name and whatever weight it still carries in rooms like this one. There's a section labeledDisposition.Another labeledSuitability.
Someone has written, in small clean type, that I'm gentle. Biddable. Loyal to family.Untouched.
My stomach surges. My ears start ringing.
"There's been a mistake," I say. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "I was told this was a charity dinner."
The woman's expression doesn't change. She's seen this exact moment before, I realize. Probably tonight. Probably a dozen times before tonight.
"Some would call it that," she says, like that's an answer. "If you'll follow me to the reception."
I don't follow her. I can't make my feet do it. The hallway tilts, just slightly, the way a boat does right before you understand the water's gone rough. Around me, women in beautiful dresses are clutching identical folders, and not one of them looks surprised.They look like they dressed for exactly this. Calculated. Composed.
I am the only one who didn't know.
My brother knew. The thought lands hard enough that I have to put a hand against the wall. He paid the fee. I wonder how much it was.
Cole insisted I come tonight. Cole, who has been distant for months, who started taking calls in other rooms and flinching every time his phone buzzed at the dinner table. Cole, who wouldn’t look me in the eyes for the last week or answer any of my questions about tonight.
He didn't send me to acharity dinner. He sent me to a market.
