Chapter 7: Bridal Showcase

In the morning he made coffee in a pot the size of a fire hydrant.

I stood in his kitchen in his grey sweater and nothing else, with the harbor flat and silver behind the glass.

"Tomorrow is today," I said. "The envelope."

Bram put down the mug.

For a second I saw him pick the words up, weigh them, and put them down again.

"Tonight," he said. "Give me until tonight."

"Is it going to hurt me?"

"No. I swear it."

"On what?"

"On Gloria."

It was the worst joke I'd ever heard, and I laughed anyway.

"Fine," I said. "I have a showcase to ruin."

Pearl was waiting for me outside the Convention Center with her purse over her arm and a look of enormous satisfaction.

"I brought a present," she said.

She opened the purse.

Inside, under a roll of mints, lay a pink phone in a glitter case.

"It was on the church windowsill," Pearl said. "I took it for safekeeping."

"Pearl. That's stealing."

"That's custody."

Faye's passcode was my birthday.

Of course it was.

I stood in the lobby of the Providence Bridal Showcase and let the number go in under my thumb.

Six digits that she had borrowed from me.

I read her messages on a bench for twenty minutes while Pearl ate a soft pretzel.

I did not read all of them.

I read enough.

Inside, the hall was a wall of white tulle.

Two hundred booths, florists and bakers and string quartets, and brides drifting between them in pairs with their mothers.

Bram had followed us in and stopped just inside the doors, with his arms folded and his shoulders against the wall.

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