Chapter 5: Sunday Lunch

"Hummed what?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I can't. I hear it and I can't find it. Like a word on the tip of your tongue."

"That's okay."

"It's been twenty years, Jules."

"Then it can wait one more night."

I packed the photos back in the box face down, the way he'd left them.

I put the lid on.

He watched me do it and didn't say thank you.

He didn't have to.

【Why do I feel bad for him. Stop it. STOP IT.】

【In the book he never told Kitty about any kidnapping. Not a word.】

【Because she never sat and waited. She screamed.】

That Sunday my mother summoned us to lunch.

The Halsey house is a limestone townhouse on East Sixty-Third with a cracked front step nobody can afford to fix.

Lucas wore a navy sweater and brought my mother white peonies.

My mother nearly fainted.

My father shook his hand like he'd never let go.

Nobody had shaken my hand in that house since the academy.

Kitty came down the stairs last, in pale pink, glowing.

She stopped when she saw Lucas.

All the color left her face.

She went around the long way, past the sideboard, so she wouldn't pass within six feet of him.

He noticed.

He didn't say anything.

He just stepped back against the wall and let her by.

【She's still TERRIFIED of him. Poor baby.】

【Is she though? He moved out of HER way.】

Lunch was cold salmon and a lot of silver.

Halfway through, Kitty tapped her glass with her fork.

"I have news."

She held up her left hand.

A new ring. Smaller than the Thackeray rock, old-fashioned, a sapphire.

"Aldous proposed last night."

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