Chapter 3 - Before Noah there was Luke
I met Luke Ashford when I was twenty-four.
I was not his family’s maid then.
I worked for a catering company.
Weddings.
Fundraisers.
Corporate dinners.
Rich people’s birthdays.
The Ashford family used our company often.
Luke was thirty.
Vivian’s younger brother.
Margot and Celeste’s younger brother too.
The only son.
People assumed that mattered to the family because of inheritance.
It mattered mostly because everyone had spent thirty years treating him like the charming exception to rules his sisters had been expected to obey.
Luke hated formal dinners.
At the first event where we spoke, he was hiding behind the catering tent eating a miniature crab cake from a napkin.
I said:
“That’s for guests.”
He looked down at his tuxedo.
“I’m wearing a tux.”
“You’re still stealing.”
“I’m also family.”
“Worse.”
He laughed.
That was it.
No thunder.
No instant romance.
A joke beside a catering tent.
Three months later, he asked me to dinner.
I said no.
He asked again.
No.
Third time:
“Coffee.”
I said:
“You people don’t drink normal coffee.”
“What do we drink?”
“Something poured by a man named Laurent.”
He laughed.
We went to a diner.
Luke did not tell his family for six months.
Not because he was ashamed of me.
Because he knew exactly what Vivian would say.
I eventually asked:
“Am I your secret?”
He answered:
“No. My family is my secret.”
May you like
Funny.
Until it wasn’t.
