She is already walking away when Tomasz catches her hand.
He doesn’t say anything. Neither does she. The chalet terrace is empty now — the wedding guests have drifted inside, the string quartet has packed up, the lanterns over the water are swaying in the last of the evening wind. Kavita stands with her back to him, her sari a deep amber against the grey-blue of Lake Como, and she doesn’t pull away.
That is the moment. That is everything.
But it begins three hours earlier.
—
The Bhatt-Dvorak wedding is, by any measure, a production.
Pooja has rented the entire lakeside chalet for the weekend — pale stone walls, cypress trees, a terrace that drops straight to the water. Her mother has flown in from Mumbai. Her future in-laws have driven from Prague. There are flower arrangements the size of small children and a seating chart that has already caused two arguments.
Kavita has been the maid of honour for six months. She knows where every candle goes.
What she doesn’t know — what Pooja neglected to mention until forty-eight hours ago, with the particular breezy cruelty of someone who means well — is that Tomasz Andreyev is the best man.
Tomasz. Who she hasn’t spoken to in ten years. Who left their shared life in London with a cardboard box and a note that said, simply, “I think we both know.”
She did not, in fact, know.
She spots him across the chalet foyer before he sees her. He is taller than she remembers, or maybe she just forgot. His hair is shorter. He’s wearing a linen suit the colour of sea glass and he is laughing at something Sergei Dvorak is saying, and the laugh is exactly the same — low, a little reluctant, like he’s surprised it escaped.
Kavita turns and walks directly into a flower arrangement.
“Steady,” says Pooja, appearing from nowhere, catching the vase. She is radiant and shameless. “He looks good, right?”
“You are getting married in four hours,” Kavita says. “Focus.”
Pooja grins and floats away.
—
The ceremony is on the terrace, facing the water.
Kavita stands to the left of the altar. Tomasz stands to the right. The lake is silk-flat and silver and enormous, and she keeps her eyes on it rather than on him, which works until the moment Pooja and Sergei exchange rings and something in Kavita’s chest does a slow, involuntary collapse.
She doesn’t cry. She is very proud of this.
She does, however, catch Tomasz looking at her from across the altar.
He looks away first. So does she. It is a draw, or something worse than a draw.
—
The reception is loud and warm and full of people who want to tell Kavita how beautiful everything is.
She accepts the compliments and refills her glass and avoids the far end of the terrace where Tomasz is talking to Sergei’s mother with what appears to be genuine patience. She notes this, and hates that she notes it.
It is Pooja’s aunt who finally ends the détente.
Auntie Mira is seventy-three, completely deaf in one ear, and has no interest in reading a room. She seizes Kavita by the wrist and tows her directly to Tomasz mid-sentence.
“This is Kavita, she organised everything, isn’t she marvellous, you two should talk, I need to sit down.”
And then she is gone.
Tomasz looks at Kavita. Kavita looks at Tomasz.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hello.”
The lake glitters behind him. A boat passes in the distance, slow and silent.
“You did organise everything,” he says. “The terrace looks extraordinary.”
“Pooja had opinions.”
“Pooja always has opinions.”
A beat. The familiar cadence of him, the way a sentence lands and leaves room. She had forgotten that too, or tried to.
“You could have warned me,” she says, quietly enough that it doesn’t carry.
“I thought Pooja would.” He pauses. “I should have, myself. I’m sorry.”
It is a small apology. It is not the apology. She doesn’t say that.
They stand beside each other at the terrace railing as the dinner begins to wind down. Not talking, mostly. Watching the lanterns come on over the water one by one. Sergei’s teenage nephew spills an entire glass of prosecco on the dance floor and there is a small, cheerful catastrophe, and Kavita laughs before she can stop herself.
Tomasz turns to look at her when she laughs.
She feels it without seeing it.
—
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