Chapter 26: The First Night

By sundown the folding chairs were stacked against the porch, and every guest had gone down the dirt road.

Patricia had kissed my cheek and left a store-bought pie on the counter.

Madison had cried into the baby's blanket.

The older detective had said only, "Call me if that black car comes back."

Upstairs, Nathaniel's phone buzzed on the cedar chest.

It had buzzed all evening, and every time he had turned it face down without reading it.

"You can look," I said.

"I already know what it says."

"What does it say?"

"That as of an hour ago I own a rented suit and a wife."

He said it lightly, but his jaw was set.

"It's sundown," I said. "Are you sorry?"

"No." He crossed the room. "I'm furious, and I'm not sorry."

I turned my back to him.

There were thirty cloth buttons down my wedding dress, and my grandmother's old seamstress had sewn every one.

He started at the top.

"New rule," I said over my shoulder.

"Tell me."

"Nothing gets signed in this marriage that the other one hasn't read. Not a lease, not a lab contract, not one page from your father."

His fingers stopped on the fourth button.

"In both directions?"

"In both directions. You read mine, I read yours, and then we sign."

"Say it back to me," he said.

"I won't sign anything you haven't read."

"Husband's word," Nathaniel said into my neck. "I won't either."

He kissed the place where the button had come open, and then the next one down.

By the thirtieth button I had stopped thinking about his father.

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