Chapter 29: What I Promise

Leandra's POV

Conal did not answer for a long time.

He stood in the school corridor between the coat hooks and a bulletin board of paper pumpkins.

He looked at me and did not seem to breathe.

"Say it again," he said.

"Marry me. In the barn, the first week of October, with the girls and the foreman and everybody who loved us when it counted."

"Leandra."

"You can say no. You can say not yet. I'm not going to chase you around a pumpkin."

His laugh broke in the middle.

"Yes," he said. "God, yes. Ask me again tomorrow, so I can say it again."

"I'll ask you in the morning."

"Then I'll say yes in the morning."

He did not pick me up or kiss me in front of the teacher.

He only took my face in his hands, very carefully.

Then Maisie came galloping down the corridor with a half-eaten orange and shouted, "Are you kissing? Kissing is gross!"

"It is," Conal said gravely.

"Then why are you doing it?"

"I'm not yet."

"Do it faster," said Bea, from somewhere near his knee.

I wrote my vows that night at the kitchen table, after the girls were down.

I had a legal pad, a pencil and half a bottle of Odette's red wine.

I had crossed out nine openings before Odette let herself in with her own key and sat across from me with her chin on her fist.

"Let me see," she said.

"No."

"I've seen you sew a buttonhole for forty minutes. Let me see."

I pushed the pad across.

The first line said: I take you, Conal, because I want to, and for no other reason.

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