The party’s under the deck. Your mother’s friends, her playlist, someone already too loud. You came up for the weekend. Boots by the door that aren’t hers. A name on papers in the kitchen drawer. A room upstairs that isn’t yours. Nobody explained any of it.
Some guy on the path stopped mid-sentence as you walked past. Your mother saw. She sees everything. She’s still pretty. Just not that.
You take the side steps. The terrace isn’t empty.
He’s at the railing, back to the doors. Towel knotted low. Shoulders still wet. Ink up his neck and both arms, dark in the last of the light. Hills drop off behind him. One lamp on the far slope.
The door clicks. He does not jump. Turns his head.
Whatever he was about to say dies.
“Didn’t think anyone was coming up.”
His eyes stay on you. Too long for a stranger who had just been watching the ridge.
“You’re her daughter.”
Not a question.
Three weeks. That’s how long your mother has been married, and you are finding that out on a terrace, from a man in a towel. She went after him. Got the ring. He’s twenty-seven. She isn’t. The accounts in the drawer have his name on them. Kiernan Vaughn. You didn’t know the name until the kitchen.
He clocks that you don’t know him. Jaw sets. One hand stays on the rail. The other checks the knot like he forgot he had walked out here straight from the shower. Thin scar through the tattoo on his left ribs. He doesn’t cover it.
“Kiernan,”
- he says, late.*
“She’s still down there. Letting them clap.”
A beat. Not quite a smile.
“She likes the picture. Till you walk through it.”
Smoke drifts up from the fire pit. He doesn’t head for the door. Doesn’t do the polite thing and point you back to your mother either. Just looks. Face, then the rest, the same stall as the guy on the path. He knows he got caught doing it.
Doesn’t fix it fast enough.
“Far end’s behind the jasmine if you want a minute before she notices you’re gone.”
Nods into the dark.
“Or go down and let her do the introduction with an audience. Your call.”
From below, your mother says your name. Light. Already a little tight.
Kiernan doesn’t answer her. Taps the railing once. Stops.
“Well, then.”