THE MARITIME FOUNDATION GALA

The dress arrived Thursday afternoon, delivered by a woman from a boutique Ivy had only ever seen from the outside, walking past on her lunch break and doing the mental math on window displays she'd never be able to afford. No note came with it. Just a card, in the same cramped handwriting from the contract margins: Wear whatever makes you comfortable enough to survive three hours of small talk. This was my assistant's guess at your size. If it's wrong, tell her and she'll fix it before Saturday.

It fit. Ivy stood in front of her bedroom mirror turning sideways, unnerved by how well it fit, and decided not to think too hard about what that meant.

He picked her up himself at six, driving instead of sending a car, which she hadn't expected. He didn't say much on the way — a few logistics, who to expect, who to avoid, a warning that Marcus Reyes would likely approach her directly at some point in the evening and that she should say as little as possible if he did. At a red light, he reached into the console and handed her a folded index card without looking at her.

"What's this?"

"Names. Faces. The people who matter tonight and one useful fact about each of them, in case you need something to say." The light changed and he pulled forward. "I wrote it in the car this morning. It's not exhaustive."

She unfolded it. Fourteen names, in that same cramped hand, each with a single line beside it — daughter starting at Brown in the fall, ask about it next to a board member's name, recently divorced, do not mention his wife beside another. It was thoughtful in a way that embarrassed her a little, because she hadn't expected him to think about her comfort at all, let alone plan for it before sunrise.

"You made this instead of sleeping."

"I sleep fine," he said, which she 

suspected was not entirely true, given the faint shadow under his eyes she'd noticed and decided not to mention.

The gala was held in a glass atrium overlooking the harbor, the same view from his office turned sideways and multiplied by chandeliers. Ivy had been to exactly one formal event in her life — her cousin's wedding, five years ago, in a rented hall with a cash bar — and this was not that. Waiters carried trays she didn't recognize the contents of. A string quartet played something she vaguely remembered from a commercial. Every third person seemed to know Ethan's name before he said a word, and every fourth one looked at Ivy the way people look at a number they're trying to calculate.

Ethan's hand found the small of her back as they walked in, light, more instruction than affection. "Smile like you mean it," he murmured. "Not too much. You're not selling anything. You're just happy."

"I don't know how to fake happy in front of two hundred strangers."

"Then don't fake it." He glanced down at her, and for a second the practiced smoothness dropped out of his voice entirely. "Just remember why you're here. The rest usually takes care of itself."

It was, she thought, oddly good advice, and she held onto it for the better part of an hour while he introduced her to men whose names she recognized from the index card and women who

 complimented her dress in a tone that suggested they were also pricing it. She didn't fake anything. She thought about eleven thousand dollars gone from a ledger, and her father sleeping easier, and the smile came easier than she expected.

She was refilling her glass of sparkling water at the far end of the bar when a man in a navy suit that fit slightly too well appeared at her elbow.

"You must be the wife," he said, before she'd even turned around. "Marcus Reyes. I sit on Ethan's board, for now."

"Ivy." She didn't offer her last name. Ethan had told her not to volunteer it unless asked directly.

"Fast work, marrying him this quickly." Marcus smiled with most of his face and none of his eyes. "I've known Ethan eleven years. He's not an impulsive man. Careful, precise, thinks three moves ahead of everyone in the room — which makes me wonder what move this is."

"Maybe it's just the one where he got married."

"Maybe." He studied her a moment too long, the way people study a signature they suspect is forged. "You have a familiar look about you, Ms. Bennett. Can't quite place it. Have we met somewhere before?"

Her pulse ticked up, though she kept her face still. "I don't think so."

"Hm." He glanced past her toward Ethan, deep in conversation with two board members across the room, and something in his expression sharpened before he smoothed it back into practiced boredom. "Well. Enjoy the party, Ms. Bennett. I'm sure we'll speak again."

He walked away before she could answer, and Ivy stood at the bar a moment longer, unsettled in a way she couldn't fully account for. It wasn't what he'd said. It was the way he'd said familiar, like he was already turning over a puzzle he hadn't finished solving yet.

Ethan found her two minutes later, reading the look on her face before she said a word. "What did he say to you?"

"He said I look familiar."

Ethan's jaw went tight, the same small crack from his office, there and gone. "He says that to everyone. It's a tactic. Ignore it."

"Does he say it to everyone?"

He didn't answer right away, and the pause told her more than any answer would have. "Come on," he said instead, offering his arm. "There's a photographer by the terrace who's been waiting twenty minutes for a shot of the happy couple. Let's give him one before he starts inventing his own version of tonight."

She took his arm, and let him lead her toward the terrace, and told herself the unease sitting low in her stomach was nothing — the same nothing as a half-turned photograph on a shelf, the same nothing as her father's hand going still at the sound of a name. Three small nothings now, stacking up quietly in a place she wasn't ready to look at yet.