Bellamy’s had never closed early for a private party in the eleven years Nate had owned it, a fact he mentioned twice while walking the staff through the evening’s arrangement, like saying it out loud made the exception feel less strange to him. Tonight the reservation book stayed empty. The whole dining room belonged to five long tables pushed into a horseshoe, white linen, candles low enough not to compete with the chandelier, and a small stage in the corner where a quartet was tuning up for a crowd too restless to listen properly.
"Three years," Franz said, standing in the doorway with Arianne’s hand in his, looking at the room like he couldn’t quite believe Nate had let anyone touch the good china. "You didn’t have to do all this."
"I didn’t do most of it. Aunt Estella ran the seating chart like a woman preparing for war, and your mother handled the flowers before I could tell her not to bother." Nate straightened a chair that didn’t need straightening. "I just closed the doors and stayed out of the way."
"Staying out of the way doesn’t usually come with a seating chart and place cards."
"Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to protect."
The room filled fast after that. Gilbert and Audrey first, Audrey already laughing at something Gilbert had said in the car. Julian with Kyle on his shoulders, Kyle loudly informing anyone who’d listen that he was now taller than his father, a claim Julian didn’t bother correcting. Joyce arrived with three dishes she’d insisted on contributing despite Nate’s kitchen being fully capable of feeding the room without her help, and nobody tried to stop her from setting them out herself. Vincent and Amanda came last, Amanda already scanning the room for the person she’d come to see most.
"Where is he?" Amanda asked, before she’d even finished taking off her coat.
"With Aunt Estella, last I saw." Arianne pointed toward the far end of the room, where Aunt Estella stood with Lexx propped against her shoulder, bouncing him gently while Lily and Leo orbited around her knees arguing about something that had already stopped mattering to either of them.
Amanda crossed the room without stopping to greet anyone else first, arms already reaching before she’d closed the distance, and Aunt Estella surrendered Lexx without argument, the handoff practiced enough that neither woman needed to discuss it. Lexx went from Aunt Estella’s shoulder to Amanda’s without a single complaint, gnawing on his own fist, more curious about it now than bothered by it, the emergency of his teeth finally behind him.
"Two teeth now," Arianne said, watching. "He bit down on a piece of banana yesterday like it owed him money."
"He gets that from Franz." Amanda pressed a kiss to Lexx’s head. "The man’s never met a meal he didn’t consider a personal challenge."
Nate raised his glass before anyone sat down properly, tapping a fork against it until the room’s noise dropped away. "I don’t do toasts. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to get a speech out of me at a wedding." He looked at Franz and Arianne across the horseshoe of tables. "I wasn’t in the room three years ago. Neither was Julian. We’ve both held it against Gilbert more than once that he got the small guest list and we didn’t."
"You’ve mentioned it," Gilbert said, dry. "Repeatedly."
"I’ll keep mentioning it. It was one room, five people, and I wasn’t in it." Nate’s mouth curved despite the complaint. "But I’ve watched what came out of that room every week since, and whatever the paperwork was supposed to be for, it turned into the realest thing I’ve seen built out of a business arrangement. I’m glad I get a night to say that out loud, even three years late."
"To being wrong about what it was supposed to be," Gilbert called out, glass already raised.
"To being wrong," the room echoed, and Nate sat back down looking like he regretted giving everyone that much sincerity to enjoy at his expense.
By the time dinner actually started, Lexx had been passed through nearly every set of arms in the room. Gilbert held him first, making faces stupid enough that Lexx shrieked with delight loud enough to turn heads at the next table over. Julian took him next, and Kyle immediately climbed into the chair beside them to supervise, informing Julian in great detail about all the things babies apparently needed to know before they turned one. Vincent came last, settling into the chair at the head of the horseshoe with Lexx tucked into the crook of one arm, and the rest of the extended Rochefort family arrived just in time to find him there, the old man beaming like the seat had been built for exactly this.
"There he is." Vincent’s cousin Odette leaned down for a closer look, the first of several relatives Arianne had met only twice before tonight. "Look at those cheeks. He’s got Alex’s chin, doesn’t he?"
"He’s got his own chin," Vincent said, without any heat in it. "Give the boy a few years before you start handing him someone else’s face."
Lily and Leo took over the feeding once the soup course cleared, a job they’d been requesting since Ellie mentioned it weeks ago. Lily went first with a spoonful of mashed sweet potato, narrating each bite out loud like it needed an introduction, and Lexx took it open-mouthed, gumming at the spoon like he’d finally been let in on something the rest of the table had been keeping from him his whole life.
"He likes it." Lily looked personally responsible for the entire achievement. "I’m good at this."
"You’re spilling more than he’s eating," Leo said, reaching for the spoon. "Let me try."
"You’ll just feed him carrots and call it a lesson."
"That’s a good lesson."
Franz let the argument run without stepping in, having learned years ago that no version of this particular fight was worth intervening in, until Arianne settled it by declaring both of them equally responsible for the next bite, which satisfied nobody and ended the argument anyway.
Later, after the plates had been cleared and the quartet had moved into something slower, Franz found Arianne near the window, away from the noise for the first time all evening.
"Two weeks," he said, without preamble, because they’d been circling the subject all week without saying it outright. "The script reading starts Monday, and the director wants me on location by the end of the month for pre-production. I’ll be gone before Lexx cuts his third tooth."
"I know."
"I didn’t want tonight to be about that." He took her hand, turning it over in his the way he did when he needed something to do with his own restlessness. "I wanted it to be about three years. But I also didn’t want to leave without telling you I already hate the two weeks, and I haven’t packed a single bag yet."
"That’s why we’re doing this tonight instead of waiting for the actual date." Arianne looked back at the room, at Lexx now asleep against Vincent’s shoulder, at Lily and Leo negotiating a truce over the last of the dessert, at every person in the room who’d shown up because they wanted to, not because anyone made them. "I didn’t want you to leave carrying the anniversary as something we missed. I wanted you to leave carrying this instead."
"Three years."
"Three years, and a room full of people who’d have shown up for us on any night you asked them to." She squeezed his hand once. "Go pack your bag tomorrow. Tonight, just be here."
Franz didn’t answer that, not with words, but he didn’t need to. He pulled her back toward the tables instead, toward the noise and the candlelight and the small, ordinary chaos of everyone he loved occupying the same room at once, and let the two weeks wait until morning to matter.