Chapter 11: The Ring

June's POV

Cal was waiting at the top of the steel stair when I got back from the Steinway.

I knew him by the hum he wasn't making.

"I went to the county," he said. "Rule three. I have to show you something, and it's going to be bad."

"Then show me."

He held out one folded page.

I carried it to the lamp and read it with my finger under each line, the way I read anything that matters.

Sandberg, Hoyt Eugene.

Geller, Cecelia Anne.

The second of August, two years ago.

I read the date four times.

"My father died on the twenty-eighth of July," I said.

"I know."

"We buried him on the first."

"I know, June."

"That afternoon Hoyt came to the shop with a box of those lemon pastries I like."

My voice was very steady, which was how I knew how bad it was.

"He sat on my father's stool and held my hand and let me cry on his good shirt."

Cal said nothing.

"He'd been married for three hours."

Something hot and enormous rose in me.

I crumpled the page without meaning to, then smoothed it flat again, because it was proof.

"Cecelia," I said. "She did my veil. She fixed my zipper. She cried at my engagement dinner."

"June."

"The ring on the chain. I asked her once whose it was.

"She said her grandmother's, and I never asked again, because it was Cecelia."

I made a sound that wasn't a word.

Then I stopped, and everything in me went quiet.

Five years of games. A line of hired men. A card that said don't let her leave the lawn.

It had never been a prank.

It had been a plan, and I was the part of it that was supposed to sit still.

"I want a bath," I said, "and I don't want to be alone. Is that allowed?"

"Rule two," Cal said softly. "You ask. I'll answer."

I looked at him, at the shape of him against the lamp, his big hands loose at his sides.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Swapped Himself Out at the Altar, So I Married the Honest Stranger from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.