Page 60 of The CEO’s Assistant

"All right."

"Two things, actually. The small one first, because I'll lose my nerve if I do them the other way around." Wren turned in the chair to face her. "Lillian calls me every Sunday at three. It’s only for about twenty minutes, and she's been doing it since my grandmother died. I'd like you to say hello to her sometime."

Cordelia had been braced for something she would have to negotiate. "Yes," she said. “I’d like that.”

"You could have thought about it first." Wren chuckled.

"I did."

Wren smiled and then put her glass down on the boards beside the chair. "Okay, the other one." She took a breath and let it out. "I know what it's called. What you do, I mean. Eleanor had called it the executive coma."

Cordelia didn't move.

"Remy told me on the night of the leak, at Lavender's." Wren said it steadily and kept going. "She came out in the rain to find me because she'd heard the day was bad. She said Eleanor used to make a joke of it at breakfast. ‘She's in the executive coma; she'll be back Thursday.’ She told me it stopped being occasional after Eleanor died and that I shouldn't take it personally because it isn't personal."

Cordelia set her glass down on the arm of the chair. "She had no right to do that," Cordelia said.

"She had every right. I'd written my resignation that afternoon. It was sitting in my drafts."

Cordelia looked out into the fog.

"She told me one more thing." Wren had gone quieter. "She said Eleanor could bring you back. That she'd put a hand on the back of your neck at the sink and you'd come into the room again. Remy never figured out how she did it. And after Eleanor died, there wasn't anybody left who could."

"No, there wasn't."

"That's what I'm asking for." Wren stopped and started again. "I'm not asking to be her. I couldn't be, and you wouldn't want me to. Let me try it my own way when I see it happening. And when I do it, you don't get to be polite to me about it. You just come back."

"I don't know if it would work," Cordelia said, honestly. "It might only have worked because it was her."

"Neither do I."

"Then you're asking me to let you find out."

"Yes." Wren pushed the blanket off her knees. "Starting now, if that's all right. You've been somewhere else for about a minute."

Wren got up. She came around the arm of Cordelia's chair and put her hand flat on the back of Cordelia's neck, under her hair, and left it there.

Her hand was warm and not steady. It was nothing like Eleanor's, but Cordelia sat under it and came back.

"Astoria asked me something this afternoon," she said. "She asked what I was hoping you'd say tonight. I couldn't answer her."

"Can you now?"

"I think I only wanted you in the house."

Wren didn't take her hand away. It was fully dark under the fog now, and neither had touched their wine in several minutes.

"Your bag's still in the car," Cordelia said.

"I know it is."

"Go get it."

Wren came back up the steps with the canvas bag over her shoulder and stood in the doorway with the fog behind her. Cordelia carried the glasses in and put them in the sink with the plates. She turned off the kitchen light and went up the stairs ahead of her.

At the top, she turned right, and Wren followed her.

The door at the end of the landing stood open. The window was still up from the afternoon, and the room was full of moving air off the water. Cordelia stopped just inside it. Wren had been in this house several times and had never once seen the inside of this room.