The Widow's Fate They Chose Was My Escape Plan novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Both Cards Said Bennett
In her parents' memorial room Willa lets Bridget draw first, takes the dying man's prenup without a fight, and a red card falls out of the box.
My three brothers locked the door of our parents' memorial room and set a wooden box on the table under their photographs.
"Two cards," my eldest brother said. "Whoever draws Bennett Slingsby's name marries him."
Bennett was my fiancé.
We were one month from getting our marriage license.
"The other one signs a prenuptial agreement with the Keane heir," my brother said.
Everyone in the city knew that heir was dying.
He had not left his bed in two years.
Whoever married him would be a widow before she was thirty.
My adopted sister, Bridget, pressed both hands over her mouth beside me, and her eyes were already wet.
She was twenty-four, and she had been crying at the right moment since she was six.
I looked at the box and was not afraid.
I was relieved.
I had stood in this room once before, on this same morning.
In my last life I drew first, my brothers called me a cheat, and I died in Bennett's house at twenty-seven.
I knew what the box held, because I had checked it last night.
Both cards said Bennett Slingsby.
Whoever drew first got him, and my brothers wanted that person to be Bridget.
In my last life a different woman married that heir, Rory Keane.
He died within three months, the Keanes moved their whole business to Miami, and the newspaper never mentioned his widow again.
I had thought about that one paragraph for years.
A woman had walked out of this city and nobody had gone after her.
To me that was not a warning.
It was a door.
So I stepped back and let Bridget draw first.
The room let out a long, grateful sigh.
My second brother actually laughed.
My eldest brother, Conrad, came around the table and put his hands on my shoulders.
"A Harcourt widow will have her pick of husbands," he said. "You'll be fine, Willa."
"Bridget is different," my second brother said. "She has no blood family to fall back on. We can't leave her future to a dying man."
Bennett stood by the window with his hands in his pockets.
"When Rory goes, Bridget and I can stay married on paper," he said. "You come back to me, and you'll never want for anything."
He said it to my face, with my parents' photographs behind me.
I didn't argue.
I didn't make a scene.
I nodded.
Bennett smiled at me, sure he had won us both.
Under the relief I was furious, and I kept my face still.
Conrad slid a thick envelope across the table.
"The heir's uncle, Desmond Keane, sent his driver with the prenup an hour ago," he said. "He wants it signed today."
I looked at my third brother.
He had not taken his eyes off the box.
Bridget reached into the box, drew a card, read it and burst into tears.
"Bennett," she whispered.
Bennett crossed the room and put his arm around her.
My second brother patted her back, and my third brother smiled for the first time all morning.
Over Bennett's shoulder, Bridget's eyes found mine, and for one moment the tears stopped.
Nobody else looked at me.
I turned to the little altar under our parents' photographs, where a candle stood beside a silver lighter.
Every year on the day they died I lit that candle.
In my last life I was never allowed to light it again after this morning, not even at the end.
I reached for the lighter.
A hand cracked across the back of mine.
"What do you think you're doing?" my third brother snapped.
He planted himself between me and the box.
He thought I was going for the cards.
He was afraid I would pick up the one Bridget left behind, turn it over and see the truth.
The back of my hand burned.
I held it against my chest and said quietly, "I only wanted to light a candle for Mom and Dad."
It would be my last goodbye to this family.
Conrad's thumb stopped halfway to the lighter.
He looked at my hand, then at the photographs.
Then he lit the candle himself.
The flame bent and straightened.
"Willa," he said, very low, "this is how it has to be. Don't hate us."
His eyes slid away from mine and went to Bridget.
He had never once looked at me that way when we were children.
I said nothing.
A drop of hot wax ran down the candle and landed on my wrist.
I flinched, and the hem of my dress caught the corner of the table.
The wooden box tipped and hit the floor.
The second card fell out, still saying Bennett Slingsby.
Under it, the velvet lining had come loose.
A strip of red-edged card slid out from beneath it and stopped against my shoe.
Nobody else had seen it yet.
I bent down and picked it up.
It was Conrad's handwriting, three words with a line under the last one.
Willa. Keane. Paid.
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