"I'm married," Sloane said. "Sometimes it rhymes with angry. Sometimes it rhymes with tired. Today it's a slant rhyme."
Audra laughed, then sobered, looking at Sloane in the mirror so their faces stacked for a second like a before-and-after of the same family nose. "Felix told me about the offer months ago. Not the letter. The idea. The maybe. I told him if he moved back without talking to you like an adult I'd revoke his best-man-adjacent privileges. Which I don't actually control. But I meant the spirit of the threat."
Sloane's hands stilled on a row of satin buttons. The bruise of information arrived on delay, the way train announcements sometimes did. "Months."
"He was scared. That isn't an excuse. I'm telling you because I don't want you walking me through any metaphorical aisles thinking you're the last to know the geography of your own life. You're my sister too, even without the blood paperwork."
"Thank you," Sloane said, and meant it, and also felt the delayed ache of being last, of being protected from a map she had every right to hold. "Does your mother know?"
"Mom knows Vance breathes in offers and exhales destiny. She doesn't know about March specifically. Or she pretends not to, which is her favorite sport."
When Felix returned from the office walk, snow bright on his shoulders, his face was difficult to read—not closed, exactly, but crowded. He found Sloane in the guest room putting on the maroon heels. Eloise's shoes fit with the slight wrongness of inherited courage, a pinch at the heel that felt like being reminded.
"I told Vance I needed until January to decide," Felix said. He unwound the green scarf and held it like a question. "He said destiny doesn't use calendars. I said marriage does. Miriam offered coffee. The corner office has a crack in the plaster shaped like Florida, if Florida had a nervous breakdown."
Sloane stood, testing the heels on the old floorboards. "I'm still angry you told Audra the idea months ago."
Felix closed his eyes. "She told you."
"She did. Because she loves you and respects me, which is a combination your uncle has not mastered and you are still learning under deadline."
"I'm sorry."
"I know. Sorry isn't the same as settled. Sorry is the opening statement."