Chapter 8: Ring Box

Aidan looked past me through the windshield.

He saw the suit, the hair, the velvet box.

His hands tightened on the wheel.

"Want me to stay?" he said quietly.

"No."

"I'll sit at the corner for ten minutes. Then I'll go to Newton."

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't."

I climbed down out of the van.

My legs were stiff from the hospital chair, and I had a roast beef sandwich sitting in me.

Evan stood up.

He looked like he hadn't slept since Wednesday.

His tie was gone, and there was a coffee stain on his cuff, and Evan Thorncroft never had a stain on anything.

"Whose van is that?" he said.

"A tailor's."

"The tailor? Kehoe? I'm getting fitted there."

"I know. You're a thirty-six."

He blinked at me.

Behind me, the van pulled away from the curb and stopped again at the end of the block with its lights on.

"Where were you?" Evan said. "Your grandmother wouldn't open the door. She talked to me through the mail slot. She called me something in Irish."

"It wasn't Irish. She made it up."

"Lauren. Where were you?"

"At the hospital."

His face went white.

"Is she..."

"She's small. They're watching her. I have to have a scan every two weeks." I looked at him. "You'd know that if you'd ever once come to one."

"I'll come. I'll come to every one. That's why I'm here."

He came down the steps toward me.

The neighbor's dog was barking behind its fence.

Under the streetlight outside my grandmother's house, Evan Thorncroft went down on one knee.

He opened the box.

It was my ring.

The one from his sock drawer.

A little round diamond on a thin gold band that had belonged to his grandmother.

"Marry me," he said. "Friday. City Hall. Just us. Before the twentieth."

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