Chapter 7: The Gate

Phyllis walked out of my library with her chin up, and I let her go.

"I can call the sheriff," I told Rory in the hall, with my hands shaking. "She stole my mail."

"The second the sheriff turns up, she burns them," he said. "Give it a day. Let's get the lawyer."

"I hate that you're right."

"I'm right a lot," he said, and for the first time since breakfast I almost laughed.

By nine that night, the wedding party at the inn had gone quiet.

Forty guests were on the lawn with string lights and champagne, because Daphne had booked a rehearsal dinner weeks ago.

I stood on the porch of the stone house, reading my grandfather's letter again, when a car came up the drive too fast.

Austin got out.

He had changed into a clean sweater, and his hair was combed, and he was holding a bunch of white roses from a gas station.

"Ada," he said. "Thank God. We need to talk."

"We don't."

"I handled that badly."

He came up the steps with his best smile, the one that had worked on me in a diner when I was twenty-two.

"I didn't know. If I had known, none of this would have happened."

"You'd have still left me for her?"

"I'd have... no. God, no. I made a mistake." He reached for my hand. "I was confused. Daphne means nothing."

"She's your fiancee."

"She's a distraction. You're my wife."

"I'm not your wife. I signed the papers."

"Judges don't sign for weeks," he said, and his smile thinned. "You haven't been divorced one day. You are legally mine."

"I'm legally nobody's."

His fingers closed around my wrist.

It wasn't a hard grip.

It was the grip he used on a waiter who had brought the wrong dish.

"You're coming home, Ada," he said, very quietly.

"You're going to tear up that paper and tell my mother you're sorry."

"Then we'll see about this hill."

Something went very still inside me.

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