I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Pinned

"No," I said.

Cliff kept his eyes on me.

"The ring is in the top tier of a cake on Gull Island," I said. "I put it there in front of eighty people."

"And the six thousand?"

"There is no six thousand."

"Then where does it come from?"

"From the account for the wedding," I said. "Bennett's father opened it and I kept the register as his bookkeeper. Every withdrawal was approved by him. I never signed anything I didn't enter myself."

Cliff folded the letter and handed it back.

"I believe you," he said.

"You've known me three days."

"I've known you since the dock."

It was an odd thing to say, and I had no answer to it.

He took the bucket of lures from the deck and went to rinse it.

I stayed where I was, holding a letter that wanted me in a courtroom.

I was working out what I would say to a lawyer when I heard a truck engine on the pier.

A black pickup with Minnesota plates was coming down the boardwalk, much too fast for a place where children ran loose.

It stopped just short of the boat slip.

Two men got out.

I knew both of them.

One was tall and wore a golf shirt, and the other had a beard and a sunburned nose.

They were the groomsmen.

They had held my shoulders down while Roxana filmed.

"Della!" the tall one called, with a big, easy grin. "There she is."

"Hey, we've been looking everywhere," said the one with the beard. "Bennett's going out of his mind."

I did not move.

All along the waterfront, people had stopped what they were doing.

A woman unloading a cooler of whitefish.

Two teenagers on bikes.

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