Page 58 of The CEO’s Assistant

At exactly six o’clock, a car turned in off the main road along the cliff, and the sound came up through the firs before she could see the headlights. Cordelia stood up and walked out across the porch and to the gravel driveway to meet her.

Wren stayed in the car a few seconds longer than she needed to before she opened the door. She had her hair down and wore a shirt Cordelia had never seen, and she looked like she'd been sleeping again. A canvas bag lay on the back seat. Wren shut the door without grabbing it.

They stopped a few feet apart on the gravel. For five days, Cordelia had refused to plan this exact moment, and now she was here and neither of them moved.

"You asked me to dinner," Wren said.

"I did."

"This is me saying yes to dinner."

"All right," Cordelia said, and heard how careful it came out, and didn't try to fix it. She had meant something more like a restaurant dinner, this worked too. "Come inside."

Wren followed her up the steps and stopped just inside the door, waiting to be told where to go, then she caught herself doing it and came through to the kitchen without having to be directed.

Four pounds of crab legs sat in the sink with enough sourdough bread beside it to last a week. Cordelia watched her take it in.

"How many people are coming?" Wren said, her eyes wide.

"I may have overestimated how much we’d need…"

"Cordelia." Wren laughed at her, her shoulders dropping into a more relaxed position. "This is at least nine pounds of crab."

"No, that’d be ridiculous. It’s only four."

"Only?" Wren laughed again.

Cordelia hadn't heard her laugh since before the leak. She turned to the sink so Wren wouldn't see her face, and she regained her composure. She gave Wren the lemons to cut into wedges and started in on the crab, boiling them in batches to make sure they cooked evenly. They worked next to each other without talking for a while, which was the first easy thing that had happened all day. Wren rolled each lemon under her palm on the board before she cut it. Cordelia had watched her do exactly that in this kitchen on the night of the storm.

"Can I ask you something?" Cordelia said, "And then I won't bring it up again."

Wren kept cutting. "Sure."

"That Sunday, you told me there was something I didn't see." Cordelia put the pot on and turned the burner up. "I've been through that day about forty times. I can't figure it out."

Wren set the knife down flat on the board. "You wouldn't have been able to. It’s not that you’re not observant enough or anything, though."

"But what was it?"

She looked at her for a long moment, then said, "No."

The water came to a rolling boil in the pot. Cordelia looked at it and didn't ask again.

"It wasn't—" Wren stopped. She picked up the knife as if she was going to slice more lemons but then put it down again. "You didn't do anything to me. Not one thing. You said the kindest thing anybody's said to me in… as long as I could remember. And I'm not going to let you turn it into a mistake."

"You stopped talking to me after that day."

"I know I did."

"Wren..."

"I said something." She turned to look at her. "One sentence, and I said it so it would sound like it was just me being a good assistant. That's why you can't find it. There was nothing to find, and I made sure of that." She started again, quieter. "It took me a month to see what I was doing. When somebody gets close to me, I turn into the job. I've been doing that since I was twenty-three, and it isn't something you did to me."

Cordelia turned the burner down.

"I said I'd only ask once," she said. "But I'm asking again. Tell me what it was and let me do something about it."

"That's why I'm not going to." Wren looked at her for the first time since the driveway. "If I tell you, you'll feel like you did it. You'll be checking my face before you say anything to me." She put both hands flat on the counter. "I spent months making myself necessary so nobody could get rid of me. I did that. Not you."