Magnolias

YARA

By the time I've handed the horse off to the groundskeeper and washed the river smell off my hands, the house has woken up around me. I can hear it before I see it — the clink of china in the breakfast room, Beau's low voice somewhere behind a newspaper, the particular quiet that means Nola is already at the table deciding how the day is going to go.

I don't say anything about the bird. I don't have proof of anything except a feeling, and feelings don't count for much in this house.

Breakfast runs on a schedule nobody wrote down but everybody obeys. Beau likes his coffee black and his eggs at seven fifteen exactly. Nola likes the morning quiet, likes her daughters presentable before they're seen. I've learned to come down early enough to eat in peace and be gone before the day really starts.

This morning, Yasmin isn't at the table when I sit down, and for a few minutes it's just me and Beau and the sound of him turning pages. It's nice. I butter my toast and he asks me, without looking up, how the ride was. Fine, I tell him, which isn't a lie exactly, just an incomplete truth, the kind this family specializes in.

Then I hear her on the stairs.

Yasmin doesn't walk into a room so much as arrive in it. Even half asleep, even in a robe with her hair loose and unbrushed, she comes down those stairs like she's the reason the staircase was built, and the whole room seems to lean toward her without meaning to.

"Morning," she says, to no one and everyone.

Beau folds his paper down an inch. "There she is."

Nola's face softens all at once, like sun coming out from behind a cloud, and she reaches over to tuck a piece of hair behind Yasmin's ear, the way you'd do for a child. "You're up early for you."

"I couldn't sleep." Yasmin stretches, and somehow makes even that sound charming. "Bad dreams." Then, turning to me like she's only just noticed I'm there: "You were out early. Riding, I take it. Did you see anything interesting?"

It's an ordinary question. It shouldn't mean anything. But my mind goes straight to the stone by the river, the broken neck, the sweetness that turned my stomach, and for a second I almost say it, almost watch her face while I do.

I don't. "Just the usual. Birds. Deer tracks by the creek."

Something crosses her face, quick enough that I almost decide I imagined it. Then she smiles and reaches for the coffee pot, and the moment closes over like water.

Nobody asks what the dreams were about. Nobody ever does. If I said I hadn't slept, Nola would ask if I'd been reading too late again, like it was a habit that needed correcting. When Yasmin says it, it becomes a small tragedy the whole table is invited to feel sorry about.

The garden party comes up over the second pot of coffee — the spring luncheon Nola throws every year for half of Savannah's old families. She's brought her folder to the table, talking through the seating chart out loud, mostly to herself.

"I thought we'd set the long table under the magnolias again," she says. "It photographed so well last year."

"The magnolias will have dropped their blooms by then," I say. "You'll have petals in everyone's food."

Nola glances at me, unbothered, already moving on. "We'll have the staff sweep it."

"Or the east lawn," I say. "It's shaded by then, and the roses will still be full."

"I like the magnolias," Yasmin says, easy, like the thought only now occurred to her. "It's tradition, Mama. People expect it."

"It is tradition," Nola says, and just like that, the folder closes a little, the decision already made, like my two sentences never happened at all.

Across the table, Beau turns a page. He doesn't look up. But I catch the half second too long before he does it, like he heard every word and chose the page instead of me.

"I was there last year," I say, keeping my voice even. "Half the guests were picking petals out of their salad."

"Were they?" Yasmin tilts her head, mild, puzzled. "I don't recall anyone complaining."

"They wouldn't complain to your face. They complained to me. In the powder room. Twice."

Nola sets her folder down, not sharply, just with the kind of finality that ends things. "Yara. It's one afternoon. It doesn't need to be a whole discussion." She says it kindly. That's the part that gets me every time — how reasonable it sounds, like I'm the one being difficult over nothing.

I could keep pushing. I know exactly how that would go. I'd end up sounding shrill, Yasmin would end up looking patient, and by the end of it Nola would be comforting her for having to deal with me. So I don't push. I nod, and reach for my coffee, and let it go the way I always let it go.

Breakfast winds down. Beau leaves for the bank. Nola takes her folder off to find the caterer, already humming, the small clash forgotten as quickly as it started. That's the thing about these mornings. They don't feel like anything to anyone but me.

I'm gathering my plate for the kitchen when Yasmin catches my arm. Her hand is light on my sleeve, cool fingers, and when I turn she's looking at me with an expression so soft and sisterly it could be lifted straight out of a family portrait.

"Don't worry," she says, and squeezes my arm once, gentle, warm. "I'll always take care of you."

The words should feel kind. Instead something moves under my skin, quick and cold, like a draft finding its way through a closed window. My arm crawls where she's touching it, and every instinct I have says get away from her hand, though I couldn't tell you why if you asked.

I don't pull away. I just smile, the way I've learned to smile, and let her hand fall on its own.