My Fiancé Stole My University Acceptance Letter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: I Said No
Reborn at twenty on the day Brendan names the wedding date, Ciara says no in front of both families and finds her stolen Westmere letter in his briefcase.
The day I died, a delivery truck hit me on Fulton Street, and I woke up on my mother's good couch with a man reading out a wedding date.
I was eighty years old when the truck came.
For sixty of those years I was married to Brendan Sutcliffe, and he never once kissed me.
He said he was a germaphobe.
Every time I leaned up to kiss him, he turned his head away with a small frown, and I learned to stop leaning.
I kept his house, I raised his dogs, and I waited for him to change.
Then he died, and in the bottom of his desk I found a photograph.
He was kissing a girl at the river, with both hands in her hair.
On the back, in his bold handwriting, he had written: The love of my life.
He had never been a germaphobe.
He had just loved someone else.
I walked out of the house without my coat and never saw the truck.
"If there are no objections," Brendan said, "let's make it the tenth of next month."
I opened my eyes.
The couch was my mother's, the one with the plastic runner we only took off for company.
My hands were small and smooth, with no spots on them.
My knees didn't hurt.
Brendan sat across from me with his ankles crossed and a leather briefcase beside his chair.
He was twenty-five, and his hair was still dark.
His grandmother Harriet sat next to him with both hands on the silver head of her cane.
My parents sat on either side of me, and both of them were already nodding.
My father cleared his throat and leaned forward to accept for me.
"Ciara would be honored," he said.
Lena Bulkley came in from the hall with the coffee tray.
She had been my best friend since we were six.
She worked the counter at the post office, and every afternoon she brought my mail up Main Street on her way home, because the shop was on her route.
She set the tray down and pressed a stack of envelopes into my lap.
On top was the electric bill.
"Breathe," she whispered. "Whatever you decide, I'll help you with everything. I promise."
She squeezed my shoulder and went to stand by the door, smiling at me.
My mother touched my knee.
"Ciara, say thank you to Mrs. Sutcliffe."
Harriet lifted her chin and waited for it.
I looked at Brendan.
He looked back at me with his calm gray eyes, the same eyes that had looked past me for sixty years.
I wanted to see if he would do it.
I leaned across the space between us, close enough to smell his soap.
His head turned away, and the small frown came right on time.
It was exactly the same.
Something in my chest went quiet, and then it went hard.
I had spent sixty years waiting for that man to change, and he hadn't, not once.
"No," I said.
Nobody moved.
My father's mouth stayed open on the word he had been about to say.
"Ciara," my mother whispered.
I stood up.
"The wedding is off."
Harriet's cane tapped once on the floorboards.
"Sit down, girl."
"I won't marry him. Not on the tenth, and not on any other day."
Brendan didn't raise his voice.
"She's nervous," he told the room. "Her mother told me she's been up all night."
"I slept fine," I said.
My father had gone red to the ears.
"Ciara, you apologize right now."
"For what?"
I had said it to the whole room, and I was twenty, and it felt wonderful.
Lena took a quick step toward me.
"Ciara, come on," she said, and then she stopped, because I wasn't looking at her.
I was looking at the floor beside Brendan's chair.
His briefcase had been standing open, and when he shifted, the flap fell back.
Inside lay a long cream envelope with a maroon crest printed in the corner.
Westmere University.
Office of Admissions.
I had sent them an application in January, in secret, with a folder of house drawings I had made on the backs of receipts.
In my first life, no answer ever came.
I had decided by June that they didn't want me.
Under the crest, in the little window, was a printed name.
Ciara Keogh.
Brendan saw where I was looking, and for the first time in sixty years, he stopped smiling at me.
"Sit down, Ciara," he said.
It was addressed to me.
The seal was already cut.
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