“So,” Sable said, folding her hands in front of her. “What can I help you with, ma’am?”
“First of all – never call me ma’am again. I’m twenty. ‘Ma’am’ makes me sound like someone who owns a collection of porcelain cats.” I walked toward the closet – a walk-in the size of my old bedroom, already stocked with clothes I didn’t recognize. “Second: I need help picking an outfit, because apparently everything in this closet was chosen by someone who thinks I’m either attending a gala or a funeral, and I genuinely can’t tell which.”
Sable’s smile widened. She crossed to the closet with purpose and began flipping through hangers with the practiced confidence of someone who actually understood clothes. After a moment, she pulled out a red gown – fitted, elegant, the kind of dress that had opinions about the body wearing it.
“How about this?”
I looked at the dress. I looked at Sable. Something about the combination – her easy competence, the simple act of someone helping me with something normal – made my chest loosen in a way I hadn’t expected.
“Perfect,” I said. “Thank you, Sable.”
“Glad to help.” And then, catching herself: “…Marlowe?”
“Marlowe.” I grinned. “See? Already better.”
“Okay, ma’am – sorry. Marlowe. Marlowe.” She repeated it like she was memorizing a vocabulary word, and the earnestness of it made me laugh.
I disappeared into the dressing room and put on the gown. Styled my hair – half up, half down, the curls cooperating for once as though they sensed I needed a win. Applied red lipstick that matched the dress in a way that felt almost defiant, like war paint for a battle no one else could see. When I stepped out, Sable’s face went through about four expressions in two seconds: surprise, delight, something close to awe, and finally a grin so wide it practically needed planning permission.
“You look incredible,” she said.
“Thank you.” I smoothed the dress over my hips. “And I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
“You’re thinking I dressed up for him.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Your face said twelve.”
She pressed her lips together, but the smile was leaking through like light under a door. I decided right then that I liked Sable. Not just tolerated her, not just appreciated her presence – I actually liked her. In the space of ten minutes, she’d made this cold, beautiful apartment feel slightly more like a place where a human being could survive.
We talked for a while – about nothing, about everything, the kind of easy, meandering conversation that women fall into when they decide they might be friends. And then, mid-sentence, a thought landed on me like a brick.
Rowan. I hadn’t called Rowan.
I grabbed my phone from the bedside table, the guilt already rising in my throat, and dialed. He picked up on the third ring.
“Wassup, Marlowe.” Casual. As if yesterday hadn’t happened. As if the world was exactly as it had always been.
“Hey,” I said, sitting on the bed. Sable, sensing something, moved to the window and looked out, giving me space without being asked. “How are you?”
“Fine.” A pause. The kind of pause that has furniture in it – heavy, loaded, taking up space. “Marlowe, I… I need to say something.”
“Okay.”
“What I did wasn’t right. Marrying you off to a stranger – I know how it looks. I know how it feels. And I’m sorry.” His voice cracked on the last word, and the sound of it – my unbreakable brother, cracking – sent something cold sliding down my spine. “But I had reasons, and I can’t keep them from you anymore.”
“Rowan-“
“I have lung cancer.” He said it flatly, the way you state a fact you’ve already absorbed, a truth that’s been living inside you so long it’s stopped being shocking and become just… architecture. “It’s been getting worse. The treatment is expensive – more expensive than we could ever… Caelum offered the money. All of it. Enough for everything. And I-” Another crack. Wider this time. “I sold my sister for it. Mom and Dad left you in my care, and I traded you like a – God, Marlowe. I’m the worst brother in the world.”
The room went very still.
I’d known. Some part of me had known since Caelum said the words in my bedroom yesterday. But hearing it from Rowan – hearing the shame in his voice, the self-loathing, the way he said Mom and Dad like their names were weights he carried everywhere – was something else entirely. It was the difference between reading about a fire and feeling the heat.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.