The Anonymous Notes That Destroyed My Wedding novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Cabin Three

Luke shows Libby a sale letter with her forged signature, Shane tries to call her drunk and confused in front of him, and Libby drops his ring into his beer, then finds Gran awake with something she never told her.

I didn't take his hand.

"I'm not thrilled," I said. "I'm Libby Torrance, and I've never heard of you."

He lowered his hand.

Then he looked past me, down the path.

Shane came up the gravel at a jog, still holding his beer.

Way back by the packing shed, a phone screen glowed for a second and went dark.

"Luke," Shane said, out of breath. "Sorry, man. She's had a night."

"So I gather," Luke said.

I put my finger on the red line.

"That's my grandmother's orchard. What is this?"

Shane smiled at me.

"Babe. We talked about this."

"We did not."

Luke pulled his glasses down onto his nose and flipped through the stack.

He held one page up in the light from the doorway.

LETTER OF INTENT, it said across the top.

Torrance Cherry Farm. Purchaser: Prentiss Lake Resorts. Price: $2,400,000.

At the bottom there were two signatures.

Shane's, big and loopy, the way he signed restaurant checks.

And next to it, mine.

Somebody had even drawn a little circle over the i in Libby, the way I did in seventh grade.

I hadn't done that since I was thirteen.

"That isn't mine," I said.

"It's dated May fourteenth," Luke said. "My company paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on it."

"Then you paid him. I've never seen that page in my life."

I said it loud enough that a light came on in cabin four.

Luke looked at me.

Then he looked at Shane.

Shane used his patient voice.

It was the voice he used on waiters, and on me when I cried.

"She signed it at the closing table, Luke. She just doesn't remember. She's had wine. She gets like this."

"What closing table?" I said. "Where was it? What color were the chairs?"

"Babe."

"Was there coffee? Did I eat a muffin?"

"Libby, you're making a scene in front of a client."

"He's not my client. I don't even know what he does."

"Acquisitions," Luke said.

"Of what?"

"Usually of things people want to sell."

"Well, you got lost."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It wasn't a smile, exactly.

"In fairness," he said, "people don't usually knock on my door at midnight to tell me they aren't selling. They send a lawyer."

"I don't have a lawyer. I have a sweatshirt."

"I noticed."

He held out the pen from behind his ear.

"Sign something for me. Anything. Your real one."

Shane laughed. "Oh, come on."

I took the pen.

I turned the aerial map over and signed the back of it against the door frame.

Libby Torrance.

No circle.

I've never put a circle over anything in my adult life.

Luke studied the two signatures side by side for a long moment.

He didn't say a word.

He folded the map in half and put it in his shirt pocket.

"When does it close?" I asked him.

"After the wedding." He glanced at Shane. "Once the deed is in both your names."

The sixth card was in my pocket with the eighth one.

Smile big when your gran hands over the deed.

I felt sick.

Shane caught my elbow.

"We're going back to the house. You're going to sleep this off, and tomorrow you're going to be beautiful."

I pulled my arm free.

My ring caught the porch light again.

Great-grandmother's ring.

Three years of Sunday pies.

I twisted it off my finger.

It stuck at the knuckle, and then it didn't.

I dropped it into the neck of his beer bottle.

It went down with a little clink and sat at the bottom in the foam.

"Ask the pawn shop if they want it back," I said.

Shane stared into the bottle.

For once he didn't have a voice ready.

Luke cleared his throat.

"I'm going to say good night."

"You can say good night to him," I said. "You and I aren't done."

"I didn't think we were."

He shut the door.

He didn't lock it.

I heard him not lock it.

Shane was tipping the bottle upside down over the grass, shaking it, trying to get the ring out.

Beer ran over his good shoes.

I walked away from him without running.

The farmhouse was dark except for one window.

The kitchen.

Gran went to bed at nine every night of her life, even in harvest.

I came in through the mudroom, past her boots and my aprons.

She was sitting at the kitchen table in her robe.

No tea. No crossword. No radio.

Just her hands flat on the oilcloth, and a manila envelope between them.

She looked at my bare finger.

She didn't ask about it.

"Sit down, Libby," she said. "There's something I haven't told you about the farm."

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