Chapter 3: The Girl Who Didn't Belong in the Room
Margaret spent four days preparing Maeve for one evening.
She was given a dress — deep navy, fitted, borrowed from Sienna's wardrobe without Sienna being asked.
She was given a name: Claire Ashford, a distant cousin from out of state, recently returned from abroad.
She was given three sentences to memorize and told to use them if anyone asked too many questions.
"Keep your answers short," Margaret said, adjusting the neckline of the dress with two fingers.
"These people don't actually want to know you.
They want to confirm you exist."
"What if someone asks how Elias and I met?"
"Say it was through the family.
Leave it vague.
Men like Ferraro don't press for details at their own dinner table.
It's considered poor form."
Maeve looked at herself in the mirror on the back of Sienna's bedroom door.
The dress fit.
That was the worst part.
It fit like it had been made for her, and she felt like a thief standing inside someone else's life.
"What does Elias know?" she asked.
Margaret paused.
"He knows Sienna won't be attending."
"Does he know why?"
"He knows what he needs to know."
That was not an answer.
Maeve recognized that.
She filed it away.
The car arrived at seven.
Margaret walked her to the door, straightened the single strand of pearls around her neck — Sienna's pearls, Maeve realized, the ones she had seen Sienna wear to every important occasion for three years — and said, "Smile when you enter.
Find Elias before anyone else finds you.
Stay close to him.
Leave when he leaves."
"And if he asks me something I don't know how to answer?"
Margaret opened the car door.
"Then be honest about the small things so he doesn't look too hard at the large ones."
The Ferraro dinner was held in a private room above a restaurant on the north side of the city.
Twelve people around a long table.
Dark wood paneling.
Candles in low holders.
The kind of room where the lighting was designed to make everyone look like they belonged.
Maeve did not belong.
She knew it the moment she stepped through the door and felt the quality of the silence that followed.
Not hostile.
Evaluating.
The way a room full of careful people goes briefly quiet when something unexpected walks in.
Elias Marchetti was at the far end of the table.
She had seen photographs.
Photographs had not been sufficient preparation.
He was in the wheelchair, as she had expected.
What she had not expected was the stillness of him.
He did not look diminished.
He looked like a man who had decided the chair was simply the position from which he would conduct the rest of the evening.
His dark suit was immaculate.
His hands rested on the arms of the chair with the particular ease of someone who had never needed to perform composure because he had simply always possessed it.
He was watching her.
Not the way men usually watched a woman enter a room.
He was watching her the way someone watches a door that has opened when they did not hear a knock.
Maeve crossed the room.
She kept her shoulders back.
She thought of her brother in the hospital bed, the monitors, the way he had looked at her last Tuesday and said he wasn't scared, which meant he was.
She stopped in front of Elias.
"Mr.
Marchetti." Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
"I'm Claire.
Claire Ashford."
He looked at her for a moment that lasted slightly too long.
"I know who you're supposed to be," he said quietly.
Her stomach dropped.
"Sit down, Miss Donnelly," Elias said.
May you like
"We'll get through the evening.
And then you're going to tell me exactly what Margaret Ashford offered you."
