The Secret Between Us novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
Cornelia toasts Isla and Pierce at the engagement dinner, and Caleb, gone three years, walks in and tells Isla she is his wife.
Cornelia Wynn tapped her spoon against her wine glass, and the whole dining room went quiet.
Harbor Light had forty people in it that night, and every one of them worked for her or owed her.
I sat at her right hand with a diamond on my finger that wasn't mine.
It was Pierce's grandmother's ring, and it pinched.
Under my collar, on a thin chain, hung a plain gold band that fit me perfectly.
I pressed two fingers against it through my shirt and kept my face still.
"Thirty years ago my husband built his first racing sloop in a shed," Cornelia said.
"Tonight I get to welcome the builder's daughter into the family that shed became."
She said builder's daughter the way other people said stray cat.
Forty glasses lifted.
Pierce squeezed my knee under the table, warm and easy.
He was twenty-six and kind, and I had said yes to him because I had been tired of being sad.
"To Isla and Pierce," Cornelia said.
"To Isla and Pierce," the room said back.
I smiled and raised my glass, because that was the job.
Then the front door opened, and the cold came down the hall ahead of him.
I knew the footsteps before I knew anything else.
Heavy boots, slow, with a drag on the left heel where he'd broken it falling off a mast at twenty-two.
The room went on talking for another second.
Then it didn't.
He stood in the doorway with snow melting in his black hair.
He had a dark beard now, trimmed close, and he was thinner than I remembered.
His canvas jacket was soaked at the shoulders.
Caleb Wynn looked at the long table, the candles, the forty faces.
Then he looked at me.
Three years.
I had counted every one of them.
My glass was still in the air, and I couldn't think how to put it down.
"Caleb," Cornelia said.
Her voice didn't shake, but her hand went flat against the tablecloth.
"Hello, Mother."
He didn't say it warmly.
Norris Wynn, her stepson, pushed back his chair so hard it scraped the floor.
"Where the hell have you been?" he said.
"Working," Caleb said.
He never took his eyes off me.
Pierce shot to his feet, grinning.
"Uncle Caleb!"
He bounded around the table and hugged him before anyone could stop him.
Caleb held him back with one arm, and his eyes stayed on mine over Pierce's shoulder.
"Look at you," Pierce said, laughing. "I wrote you a hundred times. You never answered."
"I know," Caleb said. "I'm sorry."
Pierce pulled back and turned, and he put his hand at the small of my back.
"You have to meet her. This is Isla. We're engaged."
The room went quiet.
I stood up, because my legs did it without asking me.
The ring felt like a stone.
"We've met," Caleb said.
His voice was hoarse and very quiet.
Pierce laughed again. "Of course you have. She's been sailing at the yard since she was a kid."
"She has," Caleb said.
He looked at the ring on my hand.
Something went across his face, and it was gone before anyone but me could have seen it.
I had a choice, and I made it in about two seconds.
I could sit down, and finish the toast, and let him eat dinner at the other end of the table.
Or I could find out why he had left me.
"Excuse me," I said.
I set my glass on the cloth without spilling a drop.
"Isla?" Pierce said.
"I need some air. Please, everyone, go on."
I walked down the length of the dining room with forty people watching me.
Cornelia's eyes followed me the whole way.
I didn't look at Caleb as I passed him, and I heard him turn and follow.
The porch door was heavy, and the wind off the harbor hit my face.
The snow was coming sideways under the lamp.
I walked to the far end, where the rail met the dark, and I turned around.
He came out and shut the door behind him.
The light from the window fell across his face, and I could see every year in it.
My hands were shaking, so I put them behind my back.
"You have some nerve," I said.
"Isla."
"You left a note under my door and you were gone before I woke up."
"I know what I did."
"No, you don't."
He took a step toward me, then stopped himself.
His eyes went to my throat, where the chain showed above my collar.
Slowly, he reached up and pulled his own collar aside.
Another chain hung there, and on it a gold band the twin of mine.
He had worn it for three years.
"I'm engaged to your nephew," I said, and my voice cracked.
"No," Caleb said.
He said it gently, like it was a fact about the weather.
"You're my wife."
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