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Belinda looks her up and down—her face almost not breaking rank, almost not showing what she is certainly thinking about what Maggie is wearing. “It’s nice to meet you. We’ve heard so much about you.”
Like what? she wants to ask, but instead she tries to cover herself, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “You too,” she says.
She feels Thomas’s hand on her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse us, Belinda, I just need a minute with my daughter-in-law,” Thomas says, and steers her to the side of the barn, away from the terrible Fishers and everyone else.
“You need a minute away?” Maggie whispers to him.
He shoves his hands deep into his suit pockets, looking exactly like Nate—awkward in this setting, awkward in a way that he won’t be able to shed until he is out of his suit, out of tonight’s game.
“Is it that obvious? Sorry about that. I’m not a big one for cocktail parties,” he says. “Never have been. But Gwyn is great at them.”
Maggie smiles. He isn’t saying this rudely, but with something like admiration. Admiration that Gwyn is able to stay comfortable in her own skin, or able to fake it better at least.
“Have you been in the house?” he asks, and hands her some cocktail napkins, and she begins drying herself, begins to pull herself together a little bit.
“I’ve been next door with the caterer, actually, helping a little,” she says. “And hiding a little.”
“How was that?”
“The helping or the hiding?”
He laughs. “Either.”
“Both were okay, I guess.”
And he tries to smile. Only there is something behind the smile that can’t be hidden, something that Maggie recognizes almost as soon as she sees it. A loneliness. A complicated one, one that he feels he isn’t entitled to.
“I’m supposed to make a speech in a couple of minutes about things ending peacefully, lovingly.”
“Do you think that’s possible? Things ending peacefully?”
“Well . . .” he says. “I’m starting to think the nicer you try to make things at the end, the worse you actually make them.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I would open with that.”
He starts to laugh, and Maggie feels herself warm to him. She likes Thomas. She has this feeling that something is going on, something that she doesn’t want to know about, but she likes him anyway. Because she can see it: the parts of him—and not just the outside parts—but also the sweetness that he passed on to Nate. There aren’t many men who have a real sweetness in them, and there are other things that go with it, but right now, it makes her feel grateful.
“From the little I heard, you and Nate had a tough day around here,” he says. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because I’m the reason that you are here.”
She smiles at him. “Please don’t feel badly about that. It’s not your fault that things have gotten a little out of hand.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he says.
She locks eyes with him and starts to hear something else, something that she has been suspecting—pieces coming together—just as Gwyn walks up to them, looking absolutely stunning in all-white.
“There you are,” Gwyn says, looking at Thomas and then noticing her, but with no judgment about what she is wearing—just a quick, sincere happiness to see her. And, in that moment, with all the rest of it, she can feel it. How lovely this woman really is.
“How are you doing, Miss Maggie? I feel like with all the chaos I haven’t gotten to spend any time with you.”
“Good.” Maggie says. “I’m fine.”
“Definitely?”
She nods. “Definitely.”
