That Makes Two of Us novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Veil

A cedar box, a lace veil and a ring engraved 'I will' tell Leona she is the wife; before she can think, Colton is at her door with takeout.

I told Thayne I would start in the morning, and he let me say it.

Then I went home and did not sleep.

My row house in Highlandtown is the one I grew up in.

My grandfather left it to me, along with a steel watch and a cedar box I had never opened.

I had never opened it because I thought I knew what was in it.

I carried the box to the kitchen table and set the license copy beside it.

The lid stuck, then gave.

On top lay a folded square of lace, yellow at the edges.

It was my grandmother's wedding veil.

Under it was a small velvet bag.

I tipped it out and a plain gold ring rolled across the wood.

I picked it up and turned it to the light.

Inside the band, engraved in tiny letters:

"I will."

My throat closed.

I remembered the chapel at St. Brigid's.

I was twenty-two.

My grandfather was dying down the hall, thin and grey in a hospice bed, and he asked me for one favor.

"Be a witness for me, Leona," he said. "My oldest friend, old Mr. Thayne, has a grandson. We made a promise when we were young men."

"What kind of promise?"

"A blessing. A pretend wedding, so two old fools can die easy."

I laughed, because he was dying and I would have done anything.

He had the nurse bring the veil from the house.

I stood in front of the altar in my funeral dress with lace on my head.

A volunteer from the hospice stood across from me in a suit that didn't fit.

He was a stand-in, they told me, for the Thayne boy, who couldn't come.

The chaplain read the vows slowly, for the two old men in wheelchairs at the front.

I said "I will" to a stranger in a borrowed jacket.

Everyone cried, including me.

Afterward a man in a grey suit put a pen in my hand and a paper on a clipboard.

"Just for the files, honey," he said. "A formality."

I signed my name because my grandfather was watching.

Nine days later old Mr. Thayne died too, and I never thought about it again.

Now I sat at my kitchen table with the ring in my palm.

Walter C. Thayne.

I had read it as a relative.

It was Colton Walter Thayne, with the names turned around by a county clerk.

And Lenore A. Finlay was Leona Anne Finley, with an old man's scrawl turned into someone else.

I was the wife.

I was the stranger the richest man on the water had just paid me five thousand dollars a week to find.

I laughed out loud in my empty kitchen, and it came out ugly.

"Grandpa," I said to the ceiling. "What did you do?"

The house said nothing.

He hadn't seen my face, and I hadn't seen his.

He thought the wife had worked a dying man for money.

I could call him tonight and say it was me.

Then I would be the woman he already suspected, in his office, with a license and a motive.

I had no idea why my grandfather had done it, and neither did he.

I wanted to know before anyone decided for me.

I got a chain from my jewelry dish and threaded the ring onto it.

I fastened it around my neck and tucked it under my shirt.

The ring was warm in a minute.

At eight the next evening I was still at the kitchen table, with the license and a legal pad and three cold cups of tea.

The doorbell rang.

It rang again before I got to the hall.

I looked through the peephole and saw a very large shoulder in a charcoal coat.

I opened the door.

Colton Thayne stood on my front step holding two paper bags that smelled like garlic.

"Your partner gave me the address," he said.

"Gordy is not my partner. Gordy is my boss."

"He said you'd be working late. I brought dinner."

"You're my client. Clients call."

"I called twice." He held up his phone. "You didn't pick up."

I hadn't looked at my phone since breakfast.

I stepped back, which was a mistake, because he took it as an invitation.

He walked into my front hall and looked around.

There was the staircase with the loose rail and the coat rack with my grandfather's hats.

"This is where you grew up?" he said.

"Gordy talks too much."

"He said you'd never leave it."

He went into the kitchen, put the bags down on the table and saw the pad.

I had turned the license face down before I opened the door.

He looked at it anyway.

"You're working," he said. "Good. Show me."

"Show you what?"

"How you find a ghost."

He sat down in my grandfather's chair without being told.

He took off his jacket, folded it over the back, and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

His left hand was bare.

On the fourth finger there was no ring and no mark, just skin that had never worn one.

My own hand moved up to my collarbone before I could stop it.

Under my shirt, the ring on its chain pressed against me.

"I'll show you in the morning," I said, and my voice came out almost normal.

"I'm here now," Colton said.

He opened the first bag.

"And I don't leave a case alone."

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