Chapter 22: The Box

Bridget set the wooden box on the cake table and lifted the lid.

Two cards lay inside on faded velvet.

She took them out and held them up, one in each hand, so the front rows could read them.

Both said Bennett Slingsby in black ink.

The ballroom made a low, ugly sound.

"I kept it," Bridget said.

Her voice was small, and it carried anyway.

"I kept it all these weeks. I couldn't throw it out."

She turned the cards over.

"My handwriting is on the back. I wrote the wording and gave it to my brother to print."

She looked at my third brother, then at the room.

"I wanted Bennett," she said. "I told my brothers I couldn't live without him, and I cried until they fixed it."

"Bridget," the old man said.

"Willa never cried." She laughed, and it came out wet. "I've been crying since I was six years old, and it works every time."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

"I learned in that house that if I cried first, they'd give me what she had."

Nobody spoke.

"I wore her mother's pearls to lunch in Miami," she said.

"I wanted to see if she'd say something. She didn't. That made me hate her more."

She turned to me.

"I'm not sorry that I wanted him," she said. "I'm sorry I did it to you."

"Don't," I said.

"It's true."

"It's true, and it's late." I kept my voice level. "You can stop talking now."

She stopped.

Her hands dropped to her sides, and the cards fluttered down onto the parquet.

Nobody went to her.

I watched her look for a hand, any hand, and find none in the whole room.

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