Page 39 of When Ice Queens Collide
“There’s good lighting in here,” she said, eventually. “Especially in the mornings.”
“It faces east,” Simone said matter-of-factly.
Nadine looked at the counter again, as if inspecting it. “You know, you could put things here. It’s a nice space for it. A plant, maybe. Or a photograph.” She paused. “Something personal.”
Simone went still. Nadine turned back to the stove and adjusted the heat under the pot, leaving the observation where it was. If her mother noticed that her living space was devoid of mementos, what else did she notice?
“I should get ready,” Simone said, quickly recomposing herself.
Nadine glanced over her shoulder. “Go. I’ll have something here for when you get back.”
Simone took her mug to the sink and rinsed it. The ceramic bowl sat beside the tap, the oranges vivid against the stark white counter, the first color in this apartment that hadn’t come from the view. She didn’t know when Nadine had bought them. She stood there a moment longer than was strictly necessary, staring at them, then set the mug in the rack and went to get dressed.
The Phoenix Ridge Civic Center had been built in the nineties with the optimism of a city that believed in itself, all clean lines and tall windows and a main hall that could seat three hundred people without feeling crowded. By ten-fifteen, it was close to capacity with business owners, city officials, community stakeholders, and the specific group of Phoenix Ridge citizens who showed up when something mattered. Simone had been to enough of these events in enough cities to read a room before she’d fully entered it. This one was warm and friendly. People knew each other here; they saved seats for each other.
She found an empty chair toward the back and settled in with her program and coffee in a paper cup.
Alexandra was already standing on the dais. She was mid-answer to something, leaning slightly forward, and the room had gone quiet with more than just politeness. The city official in the front row had set down his pen. The woman from the Small Business Coalition—who had been checking her phone when Simone passed her in the lobby—had her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the dais. Two rows ahead, an older man in a work jacket had turned slightly in his seat, angling himself toward Alexandra the same way you shifted slightly, almost unconsciously, toward a window when the light was good.
When Simone had read the Vaughn Industries’ community portfolio—the civic endowments and partnership agreements stretching back to Dorothy’s tenure—she had categorized all of itas simple strategic goodwill: tax-advantaged and reputationally valuable, the kind of thing a company maintains because the alternative costs more in the long run.
Simone hadn’t been wrong about the mechanics of it, but she had been wrong about what it looked like from inside the room.
Alexandra was answering a question about the water treatment facility timeline, her voice patient and precise, and a woman three rows ahead of Simone—mid-fifties with the weathered look of someone who worked outside—was nodding along before Alexandra had finished the sentence.
The panel continued. A city councilwoman asked about the sustainability initiative’s job projections, and a representative from the Phoenix Ridge Teachers’ Union asked about the school partnerships. Alexandra answered both with the same quality of care and attention, and Simone sat with her program in her lap and let her gaze shift from between the audience and Alexandra. She felt something shift in the room that she couldn’t immediately account for.
She had come here to gather data. She wanted to see the public relations in action, the return on thirty-plus years of strategic community investment. Simone had spent her entire career knowing exactly what she wanted from every room she walked into. The clarity of it had been so complete that she had stopped noticing it, the way you stopped noticing the weight of something you had been carrying long enough.
But Simone noticed its absence now.
The panel ended with sustained applause. Alexandra stepped down from the dais and strode through the room, offering handshakes, brief exchanges, a hand on the shoulder here, a name remembered there. Near the side door, a woman intercepted her. She was a petite woman with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a school administrator’s lanyard. The woman said something, and Alexandra’s expression shifted momentarilyinto something more unguarded and open. The woman touched Alexandra’s arm, and Alexandra nodded before the woman walked away. Alexandra stood still for a moment before the next person reached her, and in that flicker of a moment, she looked like she had been told something fragile.
Simone looked down at her program. She had no idea what had been said, and it was gnawing at her. She stayed at the civic center through the lunch break. When their paths crossed near the coffee station—Alexandra was in the middle of a conversation with a councilman; Simone was collecting another cup she didn't need—Alexandra glanced at her. Simone looked back, but neither of them altered course. The professionalism of it felt so practiced, like a language they had been speaking for years, which she supposed they had in their own ways.
Simone was the last out of her row. She took her time about it.
Phoenix Ridge looked different at dusk in January, emptied out and quieter than it had been in the morning. She had spent the day watching Alexandra navigate a room with competence and the trust the community had in her, and the way people responded to her was telling. Simone understood with that particular discomfort of recognizing something she couldn’t unknow that she had been doing the same thing too. The two seconds of eye contact at the coffee station, when the rest of the room had melted away and the only two people in the world were them, had all but confirmed it.
She found herself on Ridgeline Drive before she had consciously decided where she was driving.
Alexandra’s house was lit from within when she pulled up, warm light spilling out of the study windows. Despite not having called ahead, Alexandra let her in without comment, already turning back to walk toward the study before the door had fully closed. Simone turned the deadbolt before following her throughthe hall, shrugging off her coat. By the time she reached the doorway, Alexandra was already settled in the armchair with a glass of something burgundy.
“Do you want some?” Alexandra asked. “It’s a Gevrey-Chambertin.”
“Yes please.”
She watched as Alexandra stood and poured her a glass, letting it breathe before handing it to her.
“Thank you,” Simone said and took the armchair next to Alexandra. She swirled the crimson liquid a few times before sipping it, the flavor deep and earthy, a faint hint of smokiness underneath.
They talked about the summit and the community response to the panel. The competitiveness that had been the undercurrent of their dynamic so far had disappeared somewhere along the way. Simone wasn’t sure when; she wasn’t sure she cared to track it.
At one point, she found herself watching Alexandra’s fingers clasp the stem of the wine glass instead of listening to what she was saying. “The principal,” Simone said, redirecting, “at the end. What did she say to you?”
Alexandra was quiet for a moment, her gaze trained on the wine swirling in her glass. Simone wasn’t sure if she was going to answer her, but she eventually said, “She said her students made something for me for a school project. Cards, apparently. She asked if I would come by the school next week to pick them up.” She rotated the stem between her fingers. “She said they wanted me to have them.”
Simone waited.
