I Married My Fiancé's Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Candles
Followed through the sleet while her fiancé hangs up on her at his lover's party, Dess saves herself, then puts his ring on the birthday cake in front of everyone, and at 3:40 a.m. his uncle knocks on her door to honor the engagement himself.
The man in the gray watch cap had been behind me for four blocks.
Bex Ferris had offered to walk me to the train. I'd sent her home at midnight.
I first saw him at State and Madison, when I stopped to look back at my windows.
Twelve of them, papered over, glowing at the edges.
Eight months of my life were behind that paper.
He stopped when I stopped.
He read a bus schedule, at one in the morning, in the sleet.
I walked faster.
The L shook the street overhead, and the wind came sideways off the lake.
His footsteps sped up with mine.
At Wabash I called my fiancé.
It rang four times.
"Dess." Laurence was laughing at something. Music thumped behind him. "What's up?"
"Somebody's following me. Washington and Wabash. Right now."
"Are you sure?"
"He's half a block back. He stops when I stop."
"Babe, it's downtown. Everybody's walking somewhere."
A woman's voice rose over the music. "Laurie! Candles!"
I knew that voice.
Half of Chicago knew that voice. Evangeline Selby said "Hi, loves" to two million people every morning from her kitchen.
Tonight was her birthday. She'd posted the cake at nine.
"Laurence, where are you?"
"A thing for a friend. Get a cab, Dess. You're being dramatic."
"Laurence, please."
"It's one night. I'll call you tomorrow."
He hung up.
I looked back.
The man was closer.
There were no cabs. There was sleet, and the dark alley behind Bancroft's.
I ran.
My boots skidded on the ice. My keys were already in my fist.
The loading dock door was steel, with a keypad and a little square of wired glass.
I punched the code in wrong.
Footsteps turned into the alley.
I punched it in right.
The lock clanked. I threw myself through, dragged the door shut, and shot the bolt.
Then I turned around and held my phone up to the glass.
He was standing under the dock light, ten feet away.
Black parka. Gray watch cap. A thin face and a gray mustache.
I took six pictures.
He saw the flash, tugged his cap down, and walked away fast.
I called 911 myself.
The officer who came wrote it on a little pad and asked if I had a boyfriend who could pick me up.
"I have a fiancé," I said.
It came out like a joke.
While she radioed the description, I opened Evangeline's page.
A hotel rooftop on Michigan Avenue. A heated glass room over the whole lit city.
Laurence was in the third photo, with his hand flat on the small of her back.
I didn't go home to change.
I walked into that glass room soaked, sleet melting in my hair, my work jacket black with water, paint on my knuckles.
A girl at the door with a clipboard tried to stop me.
"I'm with the Bancrofts," I said, and walked past her.
The room went quiet in a ring around me.
The cake stood on a table in the middle. Three white tiers, gold leaf, twenty-six candles.
Evangeline stood behind it in cream silk.
Laurence stood behind her, and his hand was still on her back.
He saw me and took it away. Too late.
"Dess!" Big smile. "You made it. Babe, you're soaked. What happened?"
"A man followed me four blocks in the sleet," I said. "I called you."
People turned to look at him.
He laughed. "And you're fine. Look at you. You're totally fine."
Evangeline tipped her head at me. "Oh, honey. Do you want a towel?"
I took off the ring.
It was his grandmother's, a two-carat emerald cut. It had never fit. At work I wore it on a chain so it wouldn't catch in the motors.
I pushed it down into the top tier, right beside the candle shaped like a six.
Frosting rose up around the stone.
"Happy birthday," I told Evangeline. "He's yours."
One phone came up. Then ten.
Laurence kept smiling, but his eyes went flat.
He came around the table, caught my elbow, and spoke low against my ear.
"You can't do this. Your father signed. Do you know what it costs if a Faulkner walks?"
"Nine million dollars," I said. "I can read."
"Then you'll be back by Friday."
I took my elbow back.
"Enjoy your cake," I said, loud enough for the whole room.
I walked out with my wet boots squeaking on their marble.
Nobody laughed until the elevator doors closed.
At home my radiator clanked.
It was 3:10 a.m.
My phone had one voicemail, from my father.
"Odessa. Priscilla Bancroft just called me. Tell me it isn't true." A long breath. "They'll take the house. They'll take everything. Call me back."
I didn't call him back.
I sat on the kitchen floor in my wet jeans and looked at the six pictures of the man in the watch cap.
At 3:40 somebody knocked.
Not loud. Three knocks, evenly spaced.
I picked up the hammer from my toolbox and opened the door on the chain.
The sleet had stopped.
The moon was out, and frost had turned the steps and every parked car on the street white.
A man stood on my landing in a dark overcoat, his breath smoking in the cold.
Not Laurence.
Felix Bancroft.
Laurence's uncle, who was a year younger than Laurence.
I'd sat at the same dinner table with him maybe a dozen times. He sat at the head, and he barely spoke to anyone.
He looked at the hammer, then at me.
"Odessa."
"If he sent you, you can tell him..."
"He doesn't know I'm here."
His dark eyes stayed on my face.
"The family isn't just him," he said quietly. "There's me too."
He took a folded paper out of his coat. I knew it. My father's signature was on the last page.
"I'm here to honor the engagement."
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