"No," Sloane agreed. "But we don't get to pretend the decision isn't riding with us, eating our snacks, judging our shoes."
Estelle, without turning, lifted two fingers from her paperback in something that might have been blessing or merely the acknowledgment of a chord resolved temporarily into suspension. The train passed a stand of bare trees. Snow made them look like unfinished sentences.
North Springs station was smaller than memory and larger than dread. Snow had dressed the eaves in thick white epaulets. String lights framed the exit in a sincere attempt at cheer. On the platform, Judith Merriweather stood in a camel coat with her hands clasped the way she clasped them in church photographs, and beside her Dale Merriweather held a sign that said AUDRA'S PEOPLE in handwriting too cheerful for the weather, the marker ink slightly smeared where snowflakes had landed and been wiped. Behind them, tall and already talking, Uncle Vance Merriweather wore a scarf that matched no one's outfit and a smile that assumed agreement had already occurred somewhere offstage.
Sloane stepped down into cold that smelled like pine, diesel, and old arguments stored in garages.
Judith hugged Felix first, then Sloane with equal pressure and slightly more evaluation, the kind of maternal inventory that checked for sleep, hunger, and emotional mutiny. "You look tired, both of you. Good. Weddings should tire the honest ones. The dishonest ones sleep fine and ruin the brunch."
Dale kissed Sloane's cheek, rough with cold. "Bags. Bags. I've got the bags. Vance, stop narrating and lift something before I assign you the blender box."
Vance lifted nothing yet. He clapped Felix on the shoulder hard enough to register as punctuation. "March is still open. I told Miriam at the firm you'd want to walk the office this weekend. No pressure. Only destiny wearing sensible shoes."
The word destiny landed in the snow between Sloane's boots and stayed there, steaming. Felix's ears went pink above the green scarf. Sloane smiled with her mouth and not her eyes, a skill she had perfected at donor dinners where people asked her to make their generosity sound inevitable.
"Uncle Vance," Felix said carefully, "we're here for Audra."
"Of course, of course. Love first, letterhead later." Vance finally took a bag, choosing the lightest with the unconscious skill of a man who had avoided heavy lifting for decades. "Sloane, you still writing those speeches that make rich people cry usefully?"
"I still write speeches," Sloane said. "The crying is optional. The checks are not."
Judith shepherded them toward the cars with the authority of someone who had directed holiday traffic since before Felix could reach the coat hooks. Estelle Crowe emerged from the train behind them, and Judith's face opened into genuine delight that rearranged her whole winter severity. "Estelle! Audra will lose her mind in the best way. She said you might not come in this weather."
"I came," Estelle said. "I wanted to see if the girl who rushed her arpeggios could stand still long enough to say vows. Also I wanted to finish my book on a moving train, which is the only way I finish books."