Chapter 9: The Stripe

I called the Belden Garden Hall at eight the next morning, from the bakery's back office, with a pencil in my teeth.

The events manager had a brisk voice and a cold.

"Saturday the thirteenth is another couple's wedding, Ms. Marchetti. Mr. Alden's assistant phoned yesterday, and I told her no."

"He wants to pay for the date."

"The date is sold." She sniffed. "I told his assistant what I'll tell you. We hold the twentieth, and not even for the Pope."

I put the pencil down.

I felt something loosen in my chest, a knot I hadn't known was there.

The twentieth stayed the twentieth.

At two o'clock, I went to Emmett's studio, and I did not go to say thank you.

He was on a ladder at the back, hanging a lens on a bracket, and he came down fast when he saw my face.

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened." I walked to the wall.

He had taken down the forty prints of me.

In their place were the engagement proofs he'd shown Hugh in July, the ones with both of us in them.

The first was Hugh and me on the steps of the museum, his hand over mine.

His left hand.

You could see it plainly in the print, gold in the afternoon light.

A thin pale stripe circled the ring finger where a band had been.

"You asked him," I said.

Emmett stood very still.

"At the first session. You looked at his hand and you said, 'Lose something?'"

"Elise," he said.

"He said, 'A ring from a bad year,' and you picked your camera up again."

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