Chapter 9: Separate Rooms

"Don't answer it," I told Melody.

She looked at the message, and then at me.

"I'm going to unlink the tablet."

"Not yet. If it goes quiet, he'll find another way, and we'll lose the dates."

"So I just let him keep texting as me?"

"For a little while. I'll be quick."

Melody took off her apron and folded it on the table.

"You're a very odd bride," she said.

"I'm a very odd bride," I agreed.

I got home at six.

Ansel was already in the kitchen, with a box on the counter and the oven light on.

"I heard fourteen," he said, before I'd put my purse down.

"I heard it the second you came up the walk."

"You didn't ask her."

"I should have asked her back in March."

"You should have asked me."

"We'd been married eight days."

I leaned on the doorframe.

I had been holding it since the cake, small and sharp.

There was no way to put it down except on the counter between us.

"You left in the middle of the cake," I said.

"I asked you once to stay, and three hundred people watched you go."

"I know."

"I'm not saying it so you can fix it."

"I know that too."

"I'm saying it because it happened."

He nodded slowly.

"I got away from Barrett at four that morning," Ansel said.

"I walked past the ballroom on the way out, and the kitchen staff had boxed the top tier for your grandmother."

He opened the box on the counter.

Inside was a square of white cake, frozen hard.

A sugar rose sat on top, with most of its petals gone.

"I took it before she did," he said. "It's the one you didn't cut."

"I cut the bottom tier. This is the top."

"I know. I'd have been cutting it with you."

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