I Saw the Ending Before My Wedding novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Church Kitchen

I went at midnight, and Matthias made me promise one thing first.

"You go in alone," he said. "I park around the corner. If you hear the horn, you run."

"Why would you agree to this?"

"Because if I walk in, she doesn't say a word." He held my coat for me. "And because you've already decided."

I had.

St. Brendan's stood dark at the end of a row of closed shops, and its kitchen door was open a hand's width.

I pushed it with two fingers.

A single light burned over the long steel counter, and Thea sat on a stool beneath it, with a bandage on her wrist and a coat I did not know.

She stood up when she saw me.

"You came," she said.

"You asked."

"I didn't think you would."

"Neither did I."

We looked at each other across the counter.

It was the first time I saw it, the thing my father had said.

She had my mouth.

"I'm sorry," Thea said. "I know it doesn't mean anything. I'm still sorry."

"Tell me what happened."

She sat down again, and I did too, and she folded her hands tightly.

"Last spring the housekeeper told me," she said. "She was dying. Her lungs. She wrote it all down in a letter and put it in my coat. Your father is my father."

"Did you tell Lukas?"

"I told him everything. I thought he'd care."

"What did he do?"

"He told his mother."

Of course he had.

"Brigitte came to see me," Thea said. "She was so kind. She said she'd always known you'd be wrong for the family. She said the Brandauer line should have a girl who understood the world, not a nun."

"A girl like you."

"A girl who'd sign," Thea said. "She said I'd take your name and the shares, and Lukas would marry me, and nobody would ever know. She said it was only paperwork."

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