Chương 1
""The diamond ring struck the marble hard enough to make three champagne flutes jump.
“You proposed to me while your wife was still alive?”
Madeline Cross heard her own voice carry above the orchestra, above the glassware and the low expensive murmur of two hundred people pretending not to listen. Adrian Cole still had one hand around her wrist. His grip loosened only after the ring stopped spinning between them, settling against the base of a silver candleholder with a small metallic click.
For half a second he looked frightened.
Then his face closed.
“Don’t say another word.”
Madeline stared at him.
The penthouse ballroom behind Adrian was all gold light and crystal chandeliers, black tuxedos, bare shoulders, waiters moving through the crowd with trays held at collarbone height. Ten minutes earlier, people had been congratulating them. Somebody from Adrian’s investment firm had raised a glass to “the happiest man in Manhattan.” Madeline had laughed because that was what a woman in a pale-blue satin gown was supposed to do while standing beside the man she intended to marry.
Now nobody within fifteen feet was laughing.
Adrian’s fingers tightened again.
That did it.
Madeline twisted her wrist sharply, pulled free, and nearly collided with a waiter carrying champagne. The young man caught his tray with both hands. One glass tipped, splashing his sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically.
It was ridiculous that she apologized to him.
She grabbed her small pale-blue handbag from the table beside the ring and pushed through the people gathering near the French doors.
“Madeline.”
She kept going.
“Madeline, stop.”
His voice cracked through the room sharply enough to turn the heads of people who had been pretending not to watch.
She opened one of the tall doors and stepped onto the stone balcony.
Cold night air hit her bare shoulders.
The city beyond the railing looked unreal, all blue-black glass and distant red aircraft lights. Traffic crawled far below. Behind her, the ballroom continued functioning with the stubbornness of a machine: music, glasses, shoes against marble, somebody laughing too loudly because silence would have meant choosing a side.
Madeline put the handbag on the railing and opened the gold clasp.
Her hands shook so badly she missed it the first time.
The phone inside was vibrating.
Unknown caller.
She almost threw it over the balcony.
Instead she answered.
“Who is this?”
There was a pause, not long, but deliberate.
Then a woman said, “The woman whose funeral Adrian paid for.”
Madeline’s fingers closed around the railing.
The voice was older than hers. Low. Calm. Not disguised, as far as she could tell. There was no television behind it, no traffic, no sound of another person breathing nearby.
Madeline looked through the glass doors.
Adrian had not followed her.
He stood inside the ballroom with people between them, utterly still.
“No,” Madeline said. “His wife died three years ago.”
“That is what he needed you to believe.”
The words arrived gently.
That made them worse.
Madeline swallowed. “Why are you calling me tonight?”
Silence.
Behind her, the orchestra stumbled through the end of a song. A few guests clapped because no one knew what else to do.
The woman said, “Because he knows you found the ring.”
Madeline turned.
Through the French doors, past a woman in emerald silk and a man holding two untouched drinks, the diamond engagement ring remained on the marble table where she had thrown it.
Adrian followed her gaze.
The woman on the phone said, “Look inside the band.”
Madeline stopped breathing properly.
“What?”
“Look inside it.”
“I’m not going back in there.”
“You need to.”
“Tell me who you are.”
“I already did.”
“That isn’t a name.”
“No.”
Madeline pressed her thumb against the edge of the phone until it hurt. “If you’re his wife, then say your name.”
Another pause.
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m hanging up.”
“Your mother’s name is engraved inside it.”
The city seemed to tilt.
Madeline’s hand slid several inches along the railing before she caught herself.
“What?”
The caller didn’t repeat it.
Madeline stared through the doors at the ring.
Her mother had been dead for thirteen years.
There were ways to say that sentence that made it sound survivable. Her mother died when Madeline was sixteen. Her mother had been sick. Her mother had known the end was coming. Her mother had left enough ordinary things behind—a hairbrush, recipes written on index cards, a wool coat Madeline never wore—that grief eventually had somewhere to live besides inside her body.
But no version of those facts explained why Adrian Cole had proposed with a ring bearing Joanna Cross’s name.
A tear slipped down Madeline’s cheek before she felt it.
“What?” she whispered again.
This time the woman answered.
“Ask him where he got it.”
Then the call ended.
Madeline stayed beside the railing with the dead phone against her ear.
Inside, Adrian started toward her.
She lowered the phone.
He came through the French doors alone.
For once he did not walk like a man who owned the room he had entered.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
Madeline laughed.
The sound startled both of them.
“Excuse me?”
“Who called you?”
She stared at him.
He reached for her hand, stopped himself, and looked back through the doors. Several guests had turned away too late.
“Madeline, please.”
“No.”
“This is not what you think.”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Good. Then don’t let some stranger tell you what to think.”
“She knew about the ring.”
His expression altered.
It was small. A tightening at one corner of his mouth. A delayed blink.
Madeline saw it.
He saw her see it.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“Where did you get the ring?”
“Inside.”
“No.”
“Not out here.”
“Where did you get it?”
People were watching through the glass.
Adrian lowered his voice.
“An estate dealer.”
“Which one?”
“Madeline.”
“Name.”
May you like
He looked at her for a long moment. “I don’t remember.”
She let out a quiet breath.
