Profit Prophecy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Ring and Silence
At Gerald's anniversary party Zane kneels before 120 guests, Gerald calls him a leech and throws him out while Roxy says nothing, and lightning hits Zane on the overpass.
I had a ring in my pocket that cost nineteen hundred dollars, and I was still paying for it.
I was on the fourth payment of twelve.
The Maddox house in Fox Chapel had a hundred and twenty guests on the lawn that night.
They were there for Gerald's wedding anniversary, which was a lie, because Roxy's mother had been dead seven years.
Gerald threw the party anyway, every October, and nobody said a word about it.
Roxy stood by the fountain in a green dress that made her hair look like copper.
She saw me come across the grass in my one good jacket and her face went white.
"Zane, what are you doing?" she whispered.
"Giving your father a reason to stop pretending," I said.
"Not tonight."
"It's been three years, Rox."
She shook her head hard, and I should have known then that something was wrong.
I walked past her anyway.
Gerald Maddox was holding court under the tent with a champagne flute and a politician's smile.
He was fifty-eight, tanned in October, with silver hair that never moved in the wind.
When he saw me his smile stayed exactly where it was, which was worse.
"Gerald," I said. "I'd like to ask you something in front of everyone."
"Would you."
"I want to marry your daughter."
The tent went quiet in a wave, from the people nearest us out to the ones holding crab cakes.
I took out the box and went down on one knee on his wet lawn.
Roxy had followed me, and she stopped three steps behind.
I held the ring up to her.
"Roxy Maddox, will you marry me?"
Nobody said yes.
Somebody near the bar laughed, short and shocked, and then the whole tent laughed.
Gerald set his glass on a passing tray.
"Son, what do you do for a living again?"
"I deliver packages," I said. "I'm saving for a van. I'll have my own route by spring."
"You ride a bicycle."
"I ride a bicycle."
"For eleven dollars an hour."
"Sixteen with tips."
More laughter.
A woman in pearls said, "Oh, Gerald, be kind," in the voice of someone who wanted him to be anything but.
Gerald stepped close enough that I smelled the bourbon under the mint.
"I've let you eat at my table for three years," he said, loud enough for the back row.
"I've let you sleep under my roof when my daughter was too soft to say no."
"I never slept under your roof."
"You've been a leech on this family since the day she brought you home."
I stayed on my knee.
I looked past him at Roxy, and I waited for her to say my name.
She had her arms crossed over her stomach.
She said nothing.
"Look at him," Gerald told the tent. "Secondhand jacket. A ring from a mall."
"It's from a jeweler," I said.
"It's a payment plan."
I felt my ears go hot, because he was right, and he knew it because he had looked.
"Mr. Maddox," I said, "I don't need your money. I love her."
"Love," Gerald said, and the crowd laughed again.
He snapped his fingers.
Two men in white jackets came out of the crowd carrying my duffel bag.
I recognized it by the broken zipper.
They had gone into my apartment and packed it while I was still on the lawn.
"That's from my closet," I said. "How did you get into my apartment?"
"My staff fetched it this afternoon, with a very generous check for your landlord."
My stomach dropped through the grass.
He had planned this.
He had spent money on this.
"Roxy," I said.
She finally looked at me, and her eyes were wet.
She stepped forward and took the ring out of my fingers, and for one second I believed.
Then she put it back in my palm and closed my hand around it.
"Go, Zane," she said.
"Rox."
"Please go."
Her voice shook, but her hands did not.
One hundred and twenty people watched me stand up.
I stood slowly, because my knees were wet and my chest felt crushed.
I took her house key off my ring and walked to Gerald's table.
I dropped it into his champagne glass, where it sank to the bottom with a small, stupid clink.
"Remember this," I said.
"I've forgotten it already," Gerald said.
I took my bag from the white jackets and walked down the long drive alone.
Nobody followed me.
The sky over the river had gone the color of a bruise.
I walked three miles through the rain to the Mount Washington overpass, because I could not afford a cab and could not stand the bus.
The ring box was in one hand, the duffel on my shoulder.
I thought about throwing the box into the river and decided I owed the jeweler too much.
My phone buzzed once with a text from Dex, who was working a double.
"Where are you? Your closet is empty and the landlord says you paid up??"
Then the sky split open over my head.
I didn't hear the thunder, because the light came first, white and total.
It went through the top of my skull and down through my spine and out of the soles of my feet.
My whole body lit up from inside.
I remember the box leaving my hand.
I remember the road coming up to meet my face.
And in the last second before the dark, I saw the streetlights on the overpass turn gold, and a number appear over each one.
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