Chapter 4: Ask Me

"Tomorrow," I said. "Noon. Fine."

"Fine," Wyeth said.

He nodded to my father, ignored Kirsten completely and walked back across the terrace.

Kirsten turned on me the second the door closed.

"You did that on purpose."

"I was eating melon."

"You planned it. You want him crawling after you."

"I want a billion dollars and a plane ticket," I said. "He can crawl wherever he likes."

The Wainscott house in Kenilworth was older than ours and quieter, gray stone behind a wall of old oaks.

A housekeeper in a black dress showed me into a dining room with green silk walls and a table set for six.

My father was already there.

So was Kirsten, in white this time, which felt like a choice.

At the head of the table sat Wyeth's grandmother.

She was eighty-one and small, with a cap of white hair and a black cane hooked over the arm of her chair.

She looked at me over her reading glasses.

"Clementine," she said. "Sit by me. Your father talks too much and I'd like to hear someone else."

My father laughed.

It wasn't.

I sat at her right hand.

Wyeth came in last, from the garden, and took the chair across from me.

He'd put on a jacket for his grandmother.

He didn't look at me while the soup was served.

He didn't look at me while my father talked about occupancy rates.

He looked at me when the plates were cleared and his grandmother set down her spoon and said, "Well? I was told there'd be a question."

The whole table turned to me.

My throat went dry.

I'd said worse things to this man.

I'd said them in a different life, at a different table, and then I'd watched him say I do to someone else.

"Wyeth," I said. "I'm asking you to release me from our engagement and marry my sister."

He didn't blink.

"Why?"

"Because I want to leave Chicago. Because she wants you. Because it suits everybody."

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