Jilted at the Altar, I Married His Billionaire Uncle novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Bloody Hands

Dermot tells Reagan what he saw at the bottom of the hoist, and Anson shows her the scarred palms from hauling up Elise's empty safety line; on their wedding morning Hayden and Kaylee are in the same courthouse hallway.

I drove to my father's house straight from the site on Wednesday, still in my boots.

He was where he always was at five o'clock.

On the porch of the narrow brick row house on the North Side.

Green lawn chair, union jacket, a can of Iron City on his bad knee.

I sat on the top step below him, the way I had when I was six.

"You hung up on me," I said.

"I said what I had to say."

"You said one sentence, Dad."

Through the screen door I could hear the TV and my stepmother's voice on the phone in the kitchen, bright and busy.

Planning a wedding that wasn't mine.

"Tell me the rest," I said.

"I had the late shift at the hoist base," he said. "Opening night."

"The whole city up in that lobby in tuxedos, drinking champagne under my steel."

"Around midnight somebody screamed out on the plaza." He turned the can in his hands. "Then the ambulance with no siren."

I waited.

"And then the hoist came down from the roof."

His voice went flat.

"He was alone in the cage. Strahan. Tuxedo shirt soaked through. And his hands."

Dad held up his own, palms out.

"Dripping, Reagan. Blood to the wrists."

"He walked right past me and sat down in the mud and didn't say a word."

"Seven years I've told that," he said.

"In bars."

"Where else would I tell it?" He finally looked at me. "Nobody else saw what I saw."

"And now my daughter's marrying him in front of the whole city to spite a boy who isn't worth spit."

"It isn't spite."

"Then what is it?"

I looked at my hands.

"I torqued bolts on that crown," I said. "My first year. You put me up there."

"I know where I put you."

"She fell off my steel, Dad."

He didn't answer that.

"Something's wrong with the bolts on Strahan Point. I found it. I reported it."

"And two days later Hayden made me a joke in front of three hundred people."

I stood up. "I want to know what she was doing up there alone at midnight."

My stepmother came to the screen door with the phone against her chest.

"Kaylee's wedding is Thursday at ten," she told my father, like I wasn't there. "Same building. You'll wear the gray suit."

"I'm not going," Dad said.

"To Kaylee's?"

"To either one."

She looked at me, and went back inside.

My wedding dress was still hanging on the back of my old bedroom door in its garment bag.

I'd changed out of it there on Saturday night and couldn't make myself carry it out.

I left it.

Strahan Development had the top four floors of Strahan Tower.

The last time I'd stood in this building, it was open steel and wind, and I was twenty with a borrowed wrench.

At seven the guard in the empty lobby knew exactly who I was and sent me up.

Anson's office took up the whole corner of the forty-first floor.

Glass on two sides, and the Allegheny going copper in the sunset.

He was at his desk with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, reading something with a pen in his teeth.

"You should be home asleep," he said. "Connectors start at six."

"My father was at the bottom of the hoist that night."

He set the pen down.

"I know," he said. "I've heard the story. Everybody has."

"He says your hands were covered in blood."

"They were."

He stood up and came around the desk.

He held out both hands, palms up.

I'd felt the scars on Saturday. I hadn't looked at them.

They ran across both palms in thick, shiny ridges, crossing each other, the skin pulled tight and pale between them.

"Rope," I said.

I knew rope burn. Not like that.

"She went up to the crown alone," he said. "I got her voicemail late. I rode the hoist up, and the crown was empty."

"Her safety line was hanging over the side. Loose. I didn't know if she was on the end of it."

"So you pulled it up."

"Hand over hand. Forty-one stories of line, as fast as I could."

He closed his fingers. "I thought if I was fast enough she'd be there."

"She wasn't."

"No."

"Why was she up there at midnight?" I said.

"She was the engineer." He let his hands drop. "When something bothered her, she went and looked at it."

"What bothered her?"

He was quiet for one beat too long.

"I'm still finding out."

I didn't believe that was all of it. I didn't believe he'd pushed her, either.

"Nine o'clock tomorrow," I said.

"You don't have to come."

"I said I'd be there at eight-thirty."

The corner of his mouth moved, the same way it had at the hotel.

"Then I'll be there at eight."

On Thursday I wore a cream dress from a department store and my good boots.

My gang's jilt jar money was in my pocket for the parking.

I came up the stairs of the City-County Building at eight-fifteen.

Anson was on the bench with two coffees.

Halfway down the same hallway, under a light that flickered, stood Hayden in a gray morning suit.

Kaylee was beside him in a short white dress with a veil clipped into her curls, holding up her phone at arm's length.

Hayden had a license in his hand.

He saw me, and he smiled.

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