I parked at the far end and walked in alone.
The effect was immediate.
Conversation didn’t stop, not entirely. It softened. Tilted. A current changed direction. Heads turned, then turned away too quickly. I saw recognition arrive on faces followed by the same polite confusion: was this intentional, or had I somehow made a mistake?
My mother noticed first. Her smile flashed on and off like a signal failure.
“Oh,” she said when I approached. “Chase, honey. You came.”
There is a particular way mothers say you came when what they mean is like that?
I kissed her cheek.
“You look…” She stopped.
“Comfortable?” I offered.
My father, standing nearby with a circle of Logan’s relatives, glanced over and gave me a short nod before returning to a story about golf memberships.
Ivy floated toward me in a cloud of ivory silk and expensive perfume. She looked beautiful, because of course she did. That had never been the problem. The problem was the way beauty became permission in our family. Permission to be careless. Permission to be forgiven before any offense had even occurred.
“Chase!” she said, throwing her arms around me carefully so her makeup wouldn’t smudge. “You made it.”
“I did.”
She stepped back and took in the hoodie. Her smile tightened for half a breath, then returned.
“You’re very… you.”
I almost laughed.
Before I could answer, Logan appeared at her shoulder like a man arriving exactly on cue for his own scene. Navy suit. White shirt with no tie, because he was wealthy enough to be relaxed but not so relaxed that anyone might misunderstand the cost of his tailoring. He had a crystal glass in one hand and that same professionally amused expression he always wore when speaking to people he considered decorative.
