Chapter 5: The Chapel

We were married on a Saturday, in the Kincaid chapel, in a dress that a seamstress had pinned on me the day before.

There were twelve guests, all of them men, all of them in dark suits.

The priest was old and tired and kept looking at his watch.

Keir waited at the front in the chair, in a black suit with no tie.

I walked down the aisle on my own.

Nobody had offered to give me away, and I hadn't asked.

The cut on my thumb had closed to a pink line.

"Do you take this man," the priest began.

The chapel doors opened behind me.

I didn't need to turn around.

I smelled her perfume before I heard the heels, soft and expensive, the one she'd worn all my life.

"Don't stop on my account," Adelaide said.

She walked up the aisle in a cream coat with a gift box in her arms and her pearls at her throat.

Two of Keir's men stepped toward her.

"Let her through," Keir said.

She stopped beside me and smiled at the room.

She was thinner than three days ago, and her skin had gone a waxy yellow under the makeup.

"Forgive the intrusion," she said. "A mother should see her daughter married."

"I'm not your daughter," I said.

"Of course not, darling. It's a figure of speech."

She held out the box.

"Your things. The rabbit, your school ribbons, your notebooks. I couldn't bear to throw them out."

I took the box because every man in the room was watching.

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