I Married My Fiancé's Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: A Bancroft

At her kitchen table Felix, a year younger than his nephew, lays out the contract and his offer, she sets her terms and says yes, and he recognizes the man who followed her: he works for Priscilla.

I didn't take the chain off.

"It's four in the morning," I said.

He glanced at his watch. "Three forty-one."

"Did Laurence send you?"

"I told you. He doesn't know I'm here."

"Then Priscilla."

"Priscilla would rather I froze on your steps."

That sounded true.

I looked at the folded contract in his gloved hand.

Then I looked at his face.

He looked cold and controlled, far too calm for what had happened.

He looked cold, and very awake.

I slid the chain off.

"Keep your shoes on. The floor's freezing."

Felix Bancroft stepped into my kitchen and stood in the middle of it.

My kitchen was eight feet wide.

He had to duck my drying rack.

The radiator clanked.

He looked at it. "That needs bleeding."

"It needs a landlord."

I put the kettle on because my hands needed a job.

I set the hammer on the counter, next to the stove.

He glanced at it and sat down at my table, beside my mother's old sewing machine.

He unfolded the contract and turned it toward me.

"Clause nine," he said.

I knew clause nine.

I'd read all nineteen pages two years ago at my father's desk, while he told me it was a formality.

He put one finger under the line anyway.

The Faulkner parcel at State and Washington passes on the wedding day to Odessa Faulkner and her Bancroft husband.

"Her Bancroft husband," Felix said. "It doesn't say Laurence."

"Who wrote that?"

"I signed it."

"That's not what I asked."

He moved his finger down the page instead.

Clause four set the wedding date for Thursday, November 20.

That was two days from now.

Clause six was the nine million dollars if a Faulkner walked.

Clause eleven said that if the marriage ended inside one year, the land went to Laurence.

"So I need a Bancroft by Thursday," I said.

"There are two unmarried ones. You put one of them on a cake."

I almost laughed.

I didn't, because my eyes were stinging.

Laurence used to tell the story at parties.

Two boys sat in a boarding school classroom, eight and nine, while a teacher read the family tree out loud.

That was how the nine-year-old found out the skinny eight-year-old was his uncle.

He'd called Felix "Uncle" ever since, as a joke.

Then the old man died, and the chair went to the son instead of the grandson, and Laurence stopped laughing at the joke.

He never stopped saying it, though.

The kettle shrieked.

I poured two mugs of tea I didn't want.

"Why would you do this?" I asked.

"The ground under my store stays under my store. Your father keeps his house. Laurence doesn't get handed anything he didn't earn."

"And what do you get?"

He took the mug. "A wife who knows where the fuse box is."

This time I did laugh.

It came out wet and ugly.

He waited until I was done.

"One year," he said. "Then you do whatever you want."

I wiped my face with my sleeve and held up one finger.

"My windows. Nobody touches them. Not Laurence, not your sister-in-law, not you."

"Agreed."

Two fingers. "My crew keeps their jobs. All six of them."

"Agreed."

Three. "My own room. With a lock."

"Agreed."

Four. "No lies. Not one. If something's going on, you tell me."

He held my eyes for a second longer than the others.

"Agreed."

"That was fast."

"They were easy."

"Do you have any terms, or do you just say 'agreed' all night?"

"One."

He set the mug down.

"You never walk to the L alone at night again."

"That's not a term. That's a curfew."

"It's my only one."

His jaw was tight.

His knuckles were white around the mug.

I looked at the hammer on the counter.

The sleet was still dripping from my jacket on the hook.

"Fine," I said. "I'll take a cab."

"My driver."

"A cab, Felix."

He breathed out through his nose. "A cab."

I looked at clause nine again.

My father's signature was big and loopy.

Then I looked at the man who'd come through the frost to sit in my kitchen.

"Yes," I said.

He nodded once.

But he didn't pick the contract up.

He was looking at my phone, face up on the table, still open to the pictures.

"What's that?"

"Somebody followed me tonight. From the store to the alley."

His face didn't move.

Everything else about him went still.

"Show me."

I slid the phone across.

He spread two fingers on the screen and zoomed in on the thin face under the gray watch cap.

He looked at it for a long time.

"That man," he said, "works for Priscilla."

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