At the engagement dinner, my future mother in aw s…

I should have paid more attention to that look. Within the next two hours, Cordelia would stand up at the head of the table, tap a silver spoon against her wine glass, pull a folded sheet of paper out of the pocket of her dress, and read aloud a list that would change the entire course of my life. By the time I left that house, my engagement would be over.

My phone would be ringing every ninety seconds, and I would finally understand exactly who Lawrence Penhello was, and exactly what I had almost agreed to become. The dinner began the way every dinner at that house began, with Cordelia at the head of the table and Bertram at the foot, and the rest of us arranged in an order she had decided earlier in the day. I was placed to her right.

Lawrence was across from me beside his father. My own father was placed near the far end between Marigold and a cousin I had never met. I noticed it immediately.

The way she had separated us. I told myself I was being paranoid. I smiled at my father across the table, and he smiled back and lifted his water glass to me in a small private toast.