“Very light feet,” she said. “Those dancing lessons at school have their practical applications.”
She dearly hoped her parents would never call on her to display her so-called skills, which the headmistress of Billings detailed in quarterly letters to the Wellses. Corinne embraced them each in turn. Her mother asked about the Latin competition, and Corinne gave purposely vague answers to all her questions, until finally her mother gave up and started telling her excitedly about some fete that had gone better than anyone expected. Corinne tried to listen, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the two men outside the club, why they looked so familiar, and Ada’s insistence that the Hemopath Protection Agency wouldn’t trust the bulls to deal with the Cast Iron. The HPA had been formed by special appointment from the mayor less than a week after hemopathy had been declared illegal. Supposedly the agency’s purpose was to ease the integration of hemopaths into society through mandatory registration, but in the past six months, it had become obvious that the HPA was more interested in sweeping hemopaths off the streets for any imagined offense than in helping them integrate into society. Corinne had never come face-to-face with any agents, but if tales were true, they were ruthlessly efficient and handpicked for their heightened resistance to hemopathy.
It was hard to focus on anything with her mother rattling on, and finally Corinne pushed her anxious thoughts aside. She would tell Johnny tomorrow about the incident. He would know what to do.
Her father had driven the Mercedes, and Corinne rode in the backseat, popping three aspirin when her parents weren’t watching and trying not to grimace. The taxi and the train station were bad enough without having to ride in the family’s metal deathtrap all the way to their estate in the countryside. Perry and Constance Wells lived close enough to society to be involved, but distant enough to still seem important. Corinne had asked her mother once where the money came from, since her father’s job as a banker didn’t seem lucrative enough for their style of living. Her mother had said it wasn’t polite to ask about finances, though Corinne later overheard phrases like “family money” and “old blood.” She didn’t care enough to ask more, which was something her brother, Phillip, found disgraceful.
“Our name means something around here,” he’d told her once. “You should be grateful to be a part of it.”
The Wells name didn’t mean anything around the Cast Iron or the other clubs—other than the reputation Corinne herself had built. That was all that mattered to her anymore. These holidays at the family estate were just bumps in the road.
Her mother had lunch served promptly at half past one, and Corinne sat down with her parents in the sunroom for sandwiches, fresh tomatoes from the hothouse, and a cucumber drink that she actually quite liked. The Latin competition was not mentioned again, to her relief.
“Where’s Phillip?” she asked, once she felt recovered enough to actually engage in her mother’s one-sided conversation.
“He’s with Angela and her family today,” Mrs. Wells said. “I was just saying in the car that he’ll be driving back tomorrow morning.”
“Sorry, I must have been distracted.” At least she would be gone when he returned. She loved her brother, as a sister ought, but that was the only feeling she could conjure. “Like” was not something she’d felt toward him in years.
“I expect you’ll give a speech at the rehearsal dinner on Tuesday,” her father said. “You’ve always been good at that sort of thing, Corinne.”
Corinne nodded absently before dropping her fork. Rehearsal dinner.
“His wedding is next week,” Corinne said.
Her parents exchanged a glance.
“Of course it is, darling,” her mother said.
“Don’t tell me you forgot,” said Mr. Wells. “What sort of environment is that school, if you’re too busy to remember your own brother’s wedding?”
“I didn’t forget,” Corinne said, though of course she had. “It just . . . sneaked up on me.”
“Me too,” said her mother. “Just yesterday I was remembering that no one has even bothered to ask the caterers if they can come early, because of course we can’t expect the florists to set up at the same time, and Phillip is absolutely useless, but he doesn’t want Angela being bothered with the arrangements.”