My Sister Ran Before the Wedding, So I Said I Do novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Fourteen Days

She lays the petition on the breakfast table in front of his grandmother and cousin, and he gives her fourteen days to prove she is worth keeping.

Breakfast at the Sequeira house was served at six, and I was down at five-fifty with the petition folded in my robe pocket.

The kitchen was a long room of white cabinets and old blue tile.

An old woman sat at the head of the table in black wool, with a cane hooked over the chair and a cup of coffee going cold in front of her.

She was five feet tall and eighty-six years old.

She looked at me for a long time, top to bottom, and did not blink.

"So," she said. "You are the one who stayed."

"Good morning, Senhora."

"Avó. You are in the house, you call me Avó." She tapped the table with one finger. "Sit."

I sat.

Nobody had told me where, and she didn't say, so I took the chair on her right.

Her eyebrows moved.

Vasco came in dressed for the dock, in a work jacket and boots, with his hair still wet.

He saw me, and he saw where I was sitting, and he stopped in the doorway.

I put the petition on the table between the sugar bowl and the bread.

I unfolded it and turned it to face him.

"I found this in your jacket," I said.

Nobody breathed.

Avó put on her glasses and pulled the paper toward her.

She read it with her lips moving and her thumb under each line, and I watched her go still.

"Vasco."

"It was drafted before the wedding, Avó. As a precaution."

"A precaution." She laid it down. "You wrote down how to throw her away, before you gave her the ring."

"I didn't know who was coming down that aisle."

"You knew she was a Teixeira."

"I knew that much," he said.

His eyes came to me.

They were colder than they had been the night before, and a muscle in his jaw jumped.

"You went through my pocket."

"You left it in the pocket of the man who was in bed with me."

Avó made a short noise into her coffee that might have been a laugh.

He did not look amused.

"Monday," I said. "That's when it was going to be filed. I read the date."

I kept my eyes on his.

"A marriage that's been consummated makes that paper hard to file. Ask your lawyer."

His face changed a little.

The kitchen door banged open.

A man came in with a bakery box and a smile that arrived before he did.

He was thirty-six, slim, sandy-haired, in a jacket cut to show off his shoulders.

"Morning, family! I brought sweet bread for the bride."

He saw the paper on the table, and his smile did not move at all.

"What's this?"

"Nothing," Vasco said.

"It says annulment, cousin." Henrique picked it up. "Oh, this is good. Oh, I love this."

"Put it down, Henrique."

"Did she find it? Of course she found it. The Teixeiras go through everything."

He dropped into a chair and helped himself to coffee.

"Henrique," Avó said. "Out of my kitchen."

"I just got here, Avó."

"Then you will have a short visit."

He laughed, tore a piece off the sweet bread, and left it on the table.

I watched him walk out, and I knew exactly what I had been shown.

That man wanted me gone, and he wanted my husband to do it.

Vasco picked up the petition.

He folded it once, then again, and I saw his thumb move across the scar on his palm.

He was deciding.

I had known him for a day, and I knew when he was deciding.

"Fourteen days," he said.

"For what?"

"I don't file it. Not today. I give you fourteen days to show me why I shouldn't."

"Show you," I said.

"Show my grandmother. Show the auction. Show me that you can sit at this table and not be a fraud."

"I'm not a fraud. I'm not the one who ran."

"No," he said. "You're the one who stayed. That's what I haven't decided about."

"Vasco," Avó said.

"Avó."

"You will not speak to my granddaughter in that voice in my kitchen."

It was the first time anyone had called me that in the whole house.

My throat did something stupid.

Vasco looked at his grandmother for a long moment.

Then he looked at me.

"Monday you start at the auction house," he said evenly. "You'll take the scale ledger. You can add?"

"I keep my father's books."

"Then you can keep mine."

He picked up his keys.

At the door he said, without turning, "Fourteen days, Ines."

"I heard you the first time."

"Count them."

The door shut.

Avó sat with her hands folded on the head of her cane and looked at me for a long time.

"You went through his jacket," she said.

"Yes."

"Good," said Avó. "A woman should know what is in her husband's pockets."

My shoulders sank in relief.

"Next Sunday," she said, "you cook."

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