Chương 2
“Tell her what you were paid to keep buried.”
Ethan stepped backward.
One small step.
That was when Rachel knew the wedding was over.
Not because her father had appeared.
Not because two hundred people were staring.
Not because Megan was crying silently now, one hand pressed flat against her own ribs.
The wedding was over because Rachel had watched Ethan lie before. Little lies. Social lies. The harmless rearrangements people made when they wanted dinner to end pleasantly or a client to stop asking questions.
He always looked at the person while he lied.
Now he could not look at her.
Rachel removed her hand from Thomas’s.
She turned to Father Delaney.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize to me for.”
She almost laughed.
It was such a priest’s answer, and for some reason the ordinary kindness of it hurt more than the spectacle behind her.
Rachel gathered the front of her dress in one hand and walked away from the altar.
Megan followed.
Thomas did not.
Neither did Ethan.
Outside the sacristy, Rachel discovered that expensive wedding shoes were terrible for running. The left heel caught under the edge of her dress, and she stumbled hard enough to hit the stone wall with her shoulder.
Megan grabbed her elbow.
“Slow down.”
“Don’t tell me to slow down.”
“Fine. Break your neck.”
Rachel stared at her.
Megan stared back.
Then Rachel laughed once.
It was an ugly, breathless sound, completely wrong for the moment.
Megan’s face folded.
“Oh, Rach.”
“Don’t.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Rachel pushed through the sacristy door.
The room smelled faintly of old wood, candle wax, and the coffee someone had left in a paper cup beside a stack of hymnals. Her veil caught on the brass latch. She yanked it free too hard.
A pin tore loose from her hair and hit the floor.
Megan bent automatically to pick it up.
“Leave it.”
Megan straightened.
Rachel stood in the center of the room with the bouquet still in her hand.
She looked down at it as if someone else had given it to her.
“I need this off.”
“The veil?”
“The dress. Everything.”
“Rachel, we don’t have—”
“I can’t breathe in it.”
Megan moved immediately.
The zipper was hidden beneath a row of decorative buttons. Her hands shook so badly she missed the hook twice.
Someone knocked.
Rachel froze.
“Who?”
Thomas’s voice came through the door.
“It’s me.”
Megan looked at Rachel.
Rachel did not know what expression she made, but Megan said, “I can make him go.”
“No.”
Another pause.
Then Rachel said, “Wait.”
Thomas did.
That mattered, though she did not want it to.
Megan helped her out of the wedding dress and into the loose cream-colored suit Rachel had planned to wear when she left the reception. They had packed it as part of an entire sequence of events that now felt as absurd as a theater schedule after the building caught fire.
Rachel removed the pearl earrings.
Her mother’s earrings.
She placed them on the table beside the abandoned coffee.
“Open the door.”
Megan did.
Thomas stood outside with his travel bag at his feet.
Up close, his age startled Rachel. His hair had been mostly dark the last time she saw him. Now gray ran through it in broad streaks. The skin beside his eyes had deepened. There was a pale scar across the bridge of his right thumb.
He smelled faintly of cold air, old wool, and the particular dry dust of long travel.
He looked at Rachel.
“You look like your mother.”
“Don’t.”
He nodded.
“Okay.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I told you.”
“No. You gave me one sentence in front of two hundred people. What are you doing here?”
Thomas looked past her toward Megan.
Megan crossed her arms.
“She stays,” Rachel said.
“Fine.”
“Where have you been?”
“Pennsylvania mostly. Before that Ohio. Little time in Kentucky.”
“You were alive.”
“Yes.”
“And Ethan knew.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Thomas glanced toward the corridor.
“He came to see me.”
The room seemed to shift beneath Rachel.
“When?”
“Three years ago. March.”
Rachel sat down.
Not gracefully. She simply found the nearest wooden chair and dropped into it.
March.
She knew the month.
Of course she knew.
Three years earlier, on March eighteenth, she had been sitting on the floor of Ethan’s apartment eating takeout pad thai out of the carton because the dining table was covered with tax papers. She had asked him, almost casually, whether his investigator had found anything else about Thomas.
Ethan had become very quiet.
He had put down his fork.
Then he told her a recovery counselor in Ohio had confirmed Thomas died after a brain aneurysm.
Rachel had cried into Ethan’s shirt until after midnight.
Thomas watched something move across her face.
“He told you I died.”
It was not a question.
Rachel looked up.
“He said he confirmed it.”
Thomas closed his eyes briefly.
Megan whispered, “Jesus.”
“What did he tell you?” Rachel asked.
“That you didn’t want me contacting you anymore.”
“I never said that.”
“I know that now.”
“What did he show you?”
“A message. Printed. Supposed to be from you.”
“What message?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Something about how you’d finally built a stable life and hearing from me would reopen things you’d spent years recovering from.”
Rachel stood.
“Did it sound like me?”
Thomas looked embarrassed.
“At the time?”
“Yes.”
“Enough.”
The answer hurt more than if he had said yes.
Rachel walked to the small window and pressed two fingers against the glass.
Outside, wedding guests were beginning to leave through the side entrance. Some stood in clusters on the cathedral steps. Phones were already out.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did.”
Rachel turned.
“Once. Maybe twice.”
“I never got a call.”
“I didn’t have your number anymore. I called the architecture office where you worked. Left a message.”
“What office?”
“Price and Keller.”
May you like
Rachel had worked there four years.
“Who did you leave it with?”
