Chapter 6 - Breakfast Without Looking Up
I had covered my scalp by eight thirty.
It wasn't vanity. It was strategy. I found the pale gray scarf in the back of my closet, folded thin, and wrapped it low across my forehead and tight behind my ears. In the bathroom mirror under the sconces, I looked like a woman going through chemo who had decided to be gracious about it. My robe was gone. I wore a dark dress with long sleeves and shoes for the first time that morning. My feet ached against them.
Downstairs, the kitchen already sounded like a wedding. Someone had put out silver trays. Coffee, cut fruit, croissants that no one would eat. The caterer's girl was refilling orange juice. Through the doorway to the sitting area, I could hear laughter, a makeup case snapping shut, somebody talking about steaming a veil.
Sabrina was in the center of it.
She sat on the arm of the couch in white silk pants and a white top, hair pulled back clean, face already done. She looked rested. That was the thing that stopped me in the doorway. She looked completely rested, the way a bride is supposed to look on the morning she marries my son. She was holding a clipboard with the day's schedule and checking something with the planner, nodding, calm. Michael stood beside her with his hand on her shoulder, in jeans and a button-down, his hair still damp from the shower.
Nobody looked up right away. That gave me a second to watch.
I watched Sabrina for any flicker toward my head. The scarf changed my shape. Anyone who had seen me the night before, anyone who had stood close to me in the dark, would notice the difference and do the math. I kept my chin up so the edge of the fabric showed clean.
Michael saw me first. "Mom," he said, and came over. He kissed my cheek. "You need coffee? You okay? You look —"
"I'm fine," I said. "Don't fuss."
Sabrina looked up then. Her eyes went to my face, then to the scarf, then back to my face. No gasp. No question. Just a half-second hold that was too still. She smiled the way you smile at somebody's mother when people are watching.
"You look nice," she said.
That was all. One pleasantry, light and flat.
The planner kept talking about cars at two. The makeup girl asked Sabrina about lip color. Sabrina answered without taking her eyes off me for one beat longer than she needed to, and then she turned back to the clipboard like I was handled.
I walked to the counter and poured coffee I didn't want. My hand was steady. I could feel the heat of the mug through my palms. I stood there until there was a break in the chatter, until Michael stepped away to take a call from the driver, leaving that small space beside Sabrina open.
I moved into it. I didn't raise my voice. I kept my eyes on her hands on that clipboard.
"I knocked on your door around midnight," I said. "Do you remember?"
The room didn't go quiet. The caterer's girl kept working. In the sitting area, someone laughed about a bridesmaid's heels. But Sabrina's pen stopped.
She didn't look up. She stared down at the schedule like she was reading the same line twice. Her shoulders stayed perfect, her breathing stayed even. Only her fingers tightened on the edge of the board.
Then she smiled again, still without looking at me, and turned a page.
Michael came back in, pocketing his phone. "Cars are early," he said. "Mom, they're saying photos at one thirty now."
May you like
I nodded and sipped my coffee. Sabrina finally glanced up at Michael, bright and wedding-focused, and asked about his boutonniere. The moment sealed over as if it hadn't happened.
But she hadn't answered me. And she hadn't looked at my scarf again.
