The Secret Between Us novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Porch

Isla and Caleb compare the note and the annulment each was shown and discover neither wrote what the other holds.

The snow kept coming sideways, and neither of us moved.

"I'm not your wife," I said. "You made sure of that."

"I did nothing."

"You signed it, Caleb."

He frowned, and for a second he looked like the boy I had met on the yard at twenty.

"Signed what?"

"The annulment. Six weeks after you left, it came in the mail with your name at the bottom."

"I never signed an annulment."

I laughed, and it came out ugly.

"Don't."

"Isla, I never filed anything. I never touched a lawyer. I wore this ring every day."

He tapped the chain at his neck.

I wanted to believe him so badly that it made me angry.

"Then why did you leave?"

His jaw worked under the beard.

"Because my mother told me you came to her the night of the courthouse. Then your signature came to me in Nova Scotia."

I stared at him.

"She came to my room before it was light," he said.

"She said you were scared and wanted it gone before Sunday dinner."

"Six weeks later a page reached me in Lunenburg, a request to undo the marriage, with your name on the line."

"I never wrote that."

"I was home asleep!"

"I know that now."

The wind pushed a lock of hair across my mouth, and I shoved it away.

"You believed her," I said.

"For three years."

"You didn't call me. You didn't knock on my door and ask me to my face."

"I left a note."

"You left a note that said, 'I can't do this. Don't look for me.'"

He went very still.

"I didn't write that," he said.

The porch light buzzed.

Somewhere inside, someone laughed too loudly, and a chair scraped.

"It was typed," I said slowly. "On cream paper. Folded in thirds, under my door."

"I never typed anything. I haven't touched a typewriter since school."

"Then who did?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

We both looked back through the window.

At the head of the long table sat a silver-haired woman in pearls.

She was smiling at her guests.

My stomach turned over.

I had eaten at that woman's table for seven years.

She had patted my hand at my mother's funeral.

"She wouldn't," I said.

"She did something," Caleb said. "I don't know all of it yet."

"I have the paper. The one with your name."

"Show me."

"It's in my father's desk drawer. I kept it because I couldn't throw it away."

He nodded once.

"I kept mine in my bag. I carried it for three years like a stone."

"What did it say about me?"

"Nothing I want to say out loud."

I pulled my arms around myself.

The snow was settling in my hair, and I couldn't feel my fingers.

He started to take off his jacket, then seemed to remember he had no right, and held it out instead.

"I'm not wearing your jacket," I said.

"Okay."

He put it back on.

We stood there in the cold, three feet apart, a married couple who had spent three years hating each other for nothing.

I realized I was crying only when the wind turned the tears cold.

I wiped my face with my wrist.

"If we're married," I said, "then I'm engaged to your nephew, and he doesn't know."

"Yes."

"And I've worn his ring in front of everyone I know."

"Forty people," Caleb said.

"Don't you dare be funny."

"I'm not. I'm scared out of my mind."

That startled a smile out of me, and I hated it.

"What do we do?" I said.

"We find out what she did. Before anyone else knows."

"Why before?"

"Because if she sees us scared, she'll move first. She always does."

I thought about the way Cornelia had said builder's daughter.

I thought about the yard, and my father's lease, and the cottage where I'd lived all my life.

"Then we say nothing," I said. "Not to Pierce. Not to my father. Not to anyone, until we know."

"Agreed."

"And you keep your distance."

"I'll try."

"Don't try. Do."

"I haven't stopped thinking about you for three years, Isla."

He said it flat and quiet, with no heat at all, and it was worse than any speech.

I turned my face away.

The door opened behind us with a gust of warm air.

"There you two are," Pierce said.

He stood in the light with a champagne flute in each hand, smiling, and the diamond on my finger caught the lamp.

"Grandmother wants the family photo before the cake. Uncle Caleb, you too. She says you're not allowed to hide."

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