My Sister Ran Before the Wedding, So I Said I Do novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Plane Ticket

Vasco's POV

On Monday morning at six, I read Armando Teixeira's bank statements, and I did not like a single line.

I had them in a file from the original note.

I had read them before the wedding, once, fast, because I had already decided.

This time I read them with a pencil.

The ice plant's compressors ticked on the other side of my office wall, and the first boats were coming in under the window.

The chandlery had been bleeding for four years.

I knew that.

I had known it when I bought the note.

I had bought it anyway, because the Teixeiras had a good name and a daughter who could stand next to me at the altar without embarrassing my grandmother.

Lidia had been that daughter.

I had liked her well enough.

She had never once said a thing I didn't expect.

Then I turned a page and saw a line I hadn't read, because it hadn't been there when I read the file.

Armando had sent this month's statement along with his request for the second loan, so I'd see his good faith.

June 1.

One-way, Logan to Lisbon.

One thousand nine hundred and forty dollars.

Two weeks before the wedding.

I put the pencil down.

I thought of the church, the four hundred faces, my grandmother in her chair with a rosary wound twice around her fist.

I thought of the bride's room door opening, and the girl standing in it in my bride's dress.

Ines.

Nobody will mistake you for her.

I had said it in the vestry, and I had watched her face close.

I hadn't understood why.

I had meant it as the only compliment I knew how to pay.

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