Page 11 of On His Mind

I open my mouth and close it. “Why don’t you open it?”

She shrugs. “Okay.” Then she leaves the room to fetch the scissors.

When she walks back in, “I know you spent your summer in Chicago, and then you went to Lake Como, but don’t give me the Instagram version.”

I grab the hangers and start putting my shirts, dresses, and coats on them. “I helped my mom with the gala. I went to my dad’s office twice. I had lunch with people who used to babysit me and are now telling me about their divorces.”

She opens the box with the scissors and sets it aside. “How were the divorces?”

I put the last dress on a hanger and say, “Thorough.”

Ivory pulls out the dress from the box and holds it up. “And Lake Como?”

I stare at the navy dress while she admires it.

“I spent two weeks there. My dad drove and refused to use GPS. We got lost outside Varenna for an hour and a half, and he wouldn’t admit it.”

“Did you love it?”

“I photographed a drainage system.”

“A what?”

“It was eleventh century. It still works.” I shake out a sweater. “I liked it. It was the first two weeks all summer where nobody scheduled me.”

She lets that one go by without comment. She grabs a hanger for the dress and hangs it in my closet.

“Okay, so mine,” she says. “Maine was fine. My mother has a boat now. Don’t ask about the boat. Then Florida for three weeks with my aunt, who has decided I’m getting married in the next four years and has started sending me pictures of venues.”

“Did you tell her about Drew Faulkner?”

She nods.

I chuckle. “Don’t marry Drew.”

She shakes her head. “Fuck, marry, kill –– Drew is a fuck. He’s not a marry.”

“He’s a good time, not a venue.”

She laughs. “Yeah.”

“How many venues did your aunt send you?”

“Nine.” She flops backward. “Nine venues. One of them was a barn.”

“Do you like barns?”

“I don’tknow, that’s not the point—”

“I would love to design a venue.”

“That would be a dream. You should draw something up for me.”

“You mean you and Drew?”

Ivory picks up my shoe and starts inspecting it like she’s thinking about stealing it, which she is.

“So,” she says. “Speaking of Drew. The Hawthorne House is having a thing tonight.”