Turn 2 of 10

Let Brynn lead you deeper into the house

You let Brynn guide you down the hallway, and it's easier than it should be — her arm threaded through yours like you've been walking together for years. The tote bounces gently against your hip. You didn't choose it. You're carrying it anyway. The hallway opens into a grand common room with vaulted ceilings and cream-colored sofas arranged in a perfect semicircle, the kind of room that's been photographed for brochures so many times it's started to believe its own lighting. Sisters drift through in pairs and trios, each one glancing at you with the same flicker of warm recognition, like you're someone they've been expecting. Not in a generic way. In a specific, we-know-who-you-are way that makes the back of your neck prickle.

"So this is the heart of the house," Brynn says, gesturing with her free hand. "We do chapter here, sisterhood events, the occasional midnight movie night when someone's having a feelings spiral." She laughs, and two sisters on the nearest sofa laugh at the exact same moment, like a laugh track cued by invisible producers. You notice it. You file it. You're good at noticing things — that's the whole point of you being here, collecting observations like lines on a resume. You're watching them. They're not watching you. Obviously.

A girl crosses the room toward you, holding a clipboard. She's wearing the same pastel tote as yours — yours, you mean, the one you didn't choose — but hers looks broken in, like she's had it for months.

"Ivy, right?" she says, already marking something.

"We have you down for the spring palette session at four. Brynn, you're taking her?" Brynn nods, and the girl moves on without waiting for your answer. Spring palette session. Nobody asked if you wanted a spring palette session. You don't even know what that involves beyond the vague sense that fabric will be held near your face.

"Don't you just love it?" Brynn says, squeezing your arm.

"We knew the second we saw your file. You're so us." The phrasing catches — *we knew*, *we saw*, *us* — the first-person plural rolling out of her mouth like it's the most natural grammar in the world. She doesn't say *I* knew. She doesn't say the sisters knew. It's *we*, and the *we* feels bigger than the room.

At the far end of the common room, past the semicircle of sofas, a hallway branches off toward what looks like a sunlit parlor. You catch a flash of dark hair disappearing around the corner — Tamsin, maybe, or someone with the same half-reluctant posture. A table is visible through the doorway, stacked with what look like colored cards, each one ornately bordered in gold. Your feet slow before your brain catches up, and Brynn's arm tugs you gently forward.

"That's for later," she says, smiling. "You'll get there. We want you to really feel the house first."