Death Row novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: What I Signed

We were married on the deck of the lake house on a Saturday in June, with eleven guests and a photographer Marlene had found.

I was twenty-five.

Blaine wore a gray suit and kept stepping behind the photographer to move the lights.

"He's fussy about how he looks," Marlene told me, laughing, and handed me a glass of champagne.

By nine o'clock the guests had gone.

The deck was strung with white lights, and the lake was black and flat.

Marlene stood in the doorway with her purse over her arm.

"I'll leave you two," she said.

She kissed my cheek.

She kissed Blaine's.

"Don't forget the papers," she said. "The bank wants them back Monday."

Then she was gone, and the gravel crunched under her tires all the way up the road.

Blaine took my hand and turned me around to face him.

"Mrs. Fell," he said.

"Say it again."

"Mrs. Fell."

I laughed, and he kissed me.

It was a slow kiss, with his hand on the back of my neck, tasting of cinnamon and champagne.

I had thought I knew what he was like in a kiss.

I hadn't known anything.

He walked me backward through the screen door and into the kitchen without letting go of my mouth.

My back found the edge of the table.

His hands went to the zipper of my dress, and the sound of it was so loud in that quiet kitchen that I started to shake.

"Cold?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

"It's you," I said. "Take it off me."

He did.

The dress went down my arms and I stepped out of it.

He stood back with his hands at his sides and looked at me for a very long time.

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