She was talking to Astrid.
“Cutting it a little close, aren’t we, dear?” Isabel said, gliding over like a bat through her cave. She was dressed in an ivory pantsuit—the color matched Astrid’s dress perfectly, because of course it did—and three-inch ivory pumps. The woman was already a solid five feet nine without her precious stilettos and pushing sixty years old, but god forbid she ever went anywhere without heels. No, Isabel Parker-Green had to positively tower over her minions, or else they might just forget their place.
Astrid tensed, her shoulder like a brick wall against Delilah’s.
“In my day, brides arrived early to every single event so as to greet their guests,” Isabel went on. She reached out and smoothed the already-smooth fabric at Astrid’s hip. “But what do I know, right? I guess I should just be grateful you didn’t meet Spencer on some website.” She said website like it was a four-letter word, which Isabel absolutely never uttered.
“Sorry, we stopped for coffee,” Astrid said, exhaling heavily.
Isabel frowned. At least, she seemed to try to frown. Delilah saw a twitch near her pink-painted mouth, but the skin there simply bounced back into perfect formation, Botox-infused soldiers ready for inspection. “Coffee? Before coming to a tearoom? Astrid, really, I’m—”
Delilah plopped her camera bag onto the nearest pristine gold-and-white table. Crystal rattled against crystal. “Where shall I set up?”
She said the words so sweetly her teeth ached. And she planned to pair them with some dagger eyes in Isabel’s general direction, but as soon as she’d made her presence known, she regretted it. When Isabel swung her Sauron gaze toward her, Delilah’s heart immediately started pounding. Her palms grew clammy, and she had an almost uncontrollable urge to curtain her hair around her face. She resisted. She was nearly thirty years old, for Christ’s sake. She was a New Yorker now, a grown-ass woman. She had a show coming up at the Whitney. She could handle a small-town society priss.
Except this small-town society priss had been her parent during the most formative years of her life, entrusted by her sweet, naive father to provide and care for his only daughter, and Delilah was still waiting for that care part to kick in.
Isabel’s eyes skated down Delilah’s tattooed arms, lingering, Delilah was almost positive, on the blooming black-and-gray wisteria that trickled down her left forearm, ending in a sun’s curling rays at her wrist. Wisteria had been her father’s favorite, the reason he’d named his home what he did, carefully planting the purple flower so that it vined over the front of the house like a guardian. When Delilah got her first tattoo five years ago, it was always going to be wisteria. Not for the house that she couldn’t wait to escape, but for her father who dreamed of a family, the life he wanted to give her.
“Delilah, darling, is that you?” Isabel said, something like a smile attempting to settle on her frozen lips. She came at Delilah with open arms, settling her hands on her stepdaughter’s shoulders as she air-kissed both sides of her face. “It’s been so long, I hardly recognized you.”
She drew out the so for what felt like a thousand years.
“It’s me” was Delilah’s brilliant retort.
“You’re looking . . . well,” Isabel said.
“Why, thank you, Mother,” Delilah said back. Isabel winced slightly. She’d never asked Delilah to call her Mom or Mother or anything other than Isabel, and Delilah knew exactly when to bring it out. “You too.”
Isabel bared her teeth, her own special version of a warm smile. “You’re coming to Monday’s dinner, yes? Tomorrow night?”
In the extremely detailed itinerary Astrid had emailed her, nestled in between Sunday’s brunch and a two-day trip to a vineyard in the Willamette Valley was a Monday night dinner at Wisteria House. Delilah was hoping to avoid Isabel’s lair during her time in Bright Falls, but the wedding itself was taking place in the backyard, not to mention the rehearsal and tomorrow’s dinner.
Still, the thought of walking into that house always made her stomach cramp.
“Yes, she’ll be there,” Astrid said when Delilah just stood there with her mouth pursed, adding a subtle elbow in Delilah’s ribs.
“With bells on,” Delilah said.
“But not literal bells,” Astrid said, her elbow digging deeper.
Delilah side-eyed her stepsister, because really? Then again, the thought of showing up with actual bells somehow attached to her person, clinging and clanging a glorious cacophony and disrupting the museum-like quiet of Isabel’s dungeon, did sound like something Delilah would be into. And with Isabel’s age-old air of entitlement and Astrid over here bossing her around like she owned her—which she sort of did for the next two weeks—Delilah could sense that familiar anxiety bubbling up again in her chest, the pressure to please just to earn a sideways glance.