cannibal; kendall roy

introduction

After years of nonstop work, fashion shows, writing, scripting, shooting and design—Dozens of nonsensical interviews. Horrid photographs and dozens of rumors. Marguerite Garnier, or as known to her own staff, friends and family "Lou", had finally been paid back by her loving and fulfilling job as Editor in Chief of French Vogue. They had sacked her. Fired her. Kicked her from her contemporary office, and knocked her down a pedestal.

Oh, but it came with a consolation prize.

She could detox—she didn't need that. But they thought she did.

Either way, she could detox in the United States, working as an executive editor for a different department in American Vogue. That had been their offer—when they'd said they weren't firing her.

But they had.

Otherwise, it would be a demotion—and Marguerite Garnier refused to see that as an opportunity.

Sending her off to the American office.

She hadn't lived in the damn country for over ten years. She barely went to NYC Fashion Week—why would she? When she had Paris, or Milan. When she could see Schiaparelli designs on celebrities at Cannes.

It was insult to her.

How does one go from being in charge of a damn magazine to this? From rebooting it, to being given the fucking boot? The boot to lick Anna Wintour's espadrilles.

It was demeaning.

Especially considering her disdain for the States, or specifically New York—how her departure from the country had been less than cordial, and the people in her life had practically stamped her with red marks and disapproval in her final days.

Her second exile in life, that's what she liked to call her  transition back to France—and the feeling of being a stranger in your own home country. Now she was to be the foreigner again.

All because they thought she needed to detox.

Fucking detox.

Right.

That was what she'd done when she'd left New York—detox, in some facility in the south of France her father had paid for. Then she'd gotten a job and was able to drink responsibly.

And so life had gone on.

Until the death of her father.

A man who had actively done nothing, and everything for her.

Louis Garnier—a business tyrant, who after the death of his wife became a mild alcoholic and shipped his daughter off to boarding school. A tycoon with partnerships across the globe, including Waystar RoyCo.

A man who had an exquisite love of drink without ever saying it. A man who was quite sheepish, and never really spoke much—which made people believe he was so much tougher than he was.

A drunk, nonetheless.

But not a bad one.

A man who's daughter had grown up thinking him to be a stranger by the time she was thirteen, and saw him for money. A man who never sat at the dinner table with her as she rose to adulthood. A figure known through harsh tones on phone calls.

Then he died.

Up and left everything to her—as expected. Just like his father, and his father before him. So on.

He wasn't much of a father, and there wasn't much of a person for a girl to know. Unless she took interest in his work, which she didn't. He never forced her to it either. They kept their distance—he pushed that to her, and once she accepted it, it was settled.

Marguerite didn't learn it was intentional until posthumously, as she inherited her father's collection of scribbles. Something that had perturbed her preconceived notion of who he had been, causing Marguerite a few complications, that had unfortunately plagued her for more than she would've liked.

He had apparently documented plenty of his damn life in detail.

Plenty of which dealt with his pain towards the death of his wife, and his descent into self medication—which gave him the idea to send his daughter away in the first place, and force him into focusing on his work even more.

Previously, she'd thought her father to be a generally selfish man.

Just as she'd concluded all the way back in her teenaged years, accompanied by a best friend who felt equally as disrupted and disengaged by her father.

Siobhan Roy, the first girl to ever take interest in her—seemed to regale in the two trying to shove knives in the backs of their fathers—or the people around them. But more on her later.

Marguerite's father's diary entries, scrawled in romantic French, thoroughly detailed the opposite. Everything seemed to have some connection to his lovely Lou. Everything. From the portraits he had painted of the two, to his decisions to keep her away from his depressed state.

His opinions about her friends, boyfriends and career, he'd kept them to herself. He'd pretended to be dissuaded, thinking if he was without passion that it would make him ever distant and loving. That she'd never know of his true turmoil.

Naturally, after years of believing your father is a thoughtless man, incapable of passion—discovering he was quite the opposite after his passing, causes a shift in perception. If not identity. Both of which had happened to Marguerite.

As much as she'd never want to admit it, the events of her father's death had fucked her. Completely.

It had been cited as one of the reasons for her removal.

She had become sloppy, muddy. Often carrying his old and locked diaries into the office in her worn in Birkin. She'd stopped getting her highlights, started stepping on the backs of her loafers and wore clearance jeans from Urban Outfitters. Her editorials had grown loose and sloppy in the months across.

Her office was wracked with magazines and no longer polished. Her assistants could find packages of blow, or half empty bottles in her drawers.

And so, they had politely sacked her. Offered her the American role thinking she'd decline and that they'd side stepped her out of their society. And stupidly, instead of locking herself in a facility as she'd done at 22 for months on end to detox, she accepted their offer.

There was Lou, sitting uncomfortably in her father's former New York apartment, a place that had mainly
been lived in by Marguerite in her twenties. A place her father had furnished in the eighties.

Nothing had changed.

Except for the curtains, which a housekeeper had replaced after finding a hole in one of them.

And the bookshelf—holding the diaries.

A rather large and ominous bookshelf.

As she checked her email, she wrinkled her nose, it was substantially empty. No updates. She wasn't due for work for a few weeks. So she could adjust, stretch her legs in a new city.

And then there it was, clear as day, a wedding invitation.

For a Siobhan Roy and Tom Wambsgans.

But, due to boredom and luck. As well as the tingling sensation in her nose, she selected yes and sent the RSVP off on its way.