Chapter Nine

Saffron's POV

My mother arrived at eleven on Sunday morning, in a pearl gray coat, carrying a leather bag and an expression I knew too well.

She did not say hello. She stood in the doorway of the sitting room and looked around the way a general looks at a captured fort. The green curtains had been replaced with white ones. The paintings had been moved. A neon sign in pink script hung over the fireplace, reading blessed.

"What is that?"

"Nyx's," I said.

"Take it down."

"It's her house now too."

"It is your house, Saffron. And it was designed for a woman with taste." She finally looked at me. "Where is she?"

"Asleep."

"It is eleven."

"She had an event last night."

My mother took off her gloves, one finger at a time. "Do you know what the board said at the end of last week? That you have been seen at six parties in a month, and that your companion has posted your face more often than the company's logo. I have spent thirty years protecting this name, and in thirty days you have turned it into content."

"Mother."

"Sit down."

I sat. I was thirty two years old, I ran a billion dollar company, and I sat down like a boy summoned to the headmaster.

"I am not asking you to love her," my mother said. "God knows I never asked you to love the last one. I am asking you to do your duty. A child. An heir. Then the rest can sort itself out."

I looked at my hands. I thought about a note, burning on a stone hearth.

"What if I can't?" I said.

"Can't what?"

"Give you that."

"Nonsense." She waved a hand. "You are perfectly healthy. The last one was the problem, and she is gone. This one will do."

I almost laughed. This one will do. She spoke about people the way she spoke about furniture.

Nyx came downstairs at noon in a silk robe, her hair in a messy bun, and stopped dead at the sight of my mother. For a second I saw it, the flicker of something real under all that polish. She was afraid. Then she smiled.

"Mrs. Cole. What a surprise."

"Is it?"

"I would have prepared lunch."

"I doubt that."

They looked at each other. The sunlight caught the glass of the neon sign and threw a pink stain across my mother's coat.

"Have you spoken to your doctor?" my mother said.

Nyx blinked. "About what?"

"About the matter at hand. Saffron's wife must give him a child. It has been two months."

"It has been six weeks."

"Is that a reason?"

I stood up. "Mother, that's enough."

"No." Nyx's voice cut in, high and bright. She tilted her head, and I realized with a slow sinking feeling that she was about to do something I would not like. "Actually, Mrs. Cole, I was going to tell you both at dinner. But since you're here."

She put a hand on her stomach.

The room went very quiet. I felt, rather than heard, my mother take a step forward.

"I'm pregnant," Nyx said.

My mother let out a breath I think she had been holding for five years. Her whole face changed. The hard lines softened, the thin mouth trembled, and for the first time in my adult life I saw her look like a woman who might cry.

"Two months," Nyx said, in a small, brave voice. "I wanted to be sure before I said anything. I didn't want to disappoint you."

"My dear girl." My mother crossed the room and took Nyx's hands in hers. I had never seen her touch anyone like that. "My dear girl. Why did you not say so at once?"

"I was scared."

"Of what? Sit. Sit down. Saffron, get her some water. Have you seen a doctor?"

"I have an appointment next week."

"I shall go with you."

I stood where I was, holding nothing. Nyx looked at me over my mother's shoulder. She smiled, soft and tearful, and the tears were real, and I thought, she is very good.

Something in me did not move.

I should have felt something. Relief. Or fear, or hope, or duty. Instead I felt a calm so complete it was almost cold. A voice at the back of my head whispered, two months. She told me nothing. She was at the Dubai show three weeks ago, in a dress that showed her whole back, drinking champagne at the bar.

I told myself I was imagining things. I told myself she had been careful. Women were. I had no right to question that.

My mother called every number she knew. By evening the news was on three websites. By nine o'clock, a photograph of Nyx holding a tiny pair of white shoes had been shared four hundred thousand times, with the caption, our little miracle. Congratulations poured in. The board sent flowers. A man from the press called our house and asked whether the family would be willing to give an exclusive.

Nyx lay on the sofa with her feet in my mother's lap, glowing, and ate grapes.

That night I went into the bathroom to wash my face. The cabinet under the sink was open. The bin beside it was full of tissues and crumpled paper. On the very top, right where she'd tossed it in a hurry, sat a small pink box.

It was a pregnancy test. The packaging was torn at one end.

I picked it up. I turned it over. Inside, still sealed in its foil, the little plastic stick lay untouched. Not used. Not even opened.

I stood there for a long time with it in my hand, listening to my mother's delighted voice downstairs, and to Nyx laughing, and to the click of a camera.

Behind me, in the bedroom, I heard the soft creak of the door.

"Saffron?" Nyx said. "What are you doing?"