Love Is Blind, I'm Not novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Every Sunday

Margot moves in with Aunt Bernie after Lacey brushes off the money. Spencer's brother Elliot is on the pink porch, and he heard every voicemail.

I was packing by one in the morning.

Two suitcases and a laundry basket, and I still had room.

Three years of living with Spencer's schedule had taught me to own very little.

The front door opened at two.

Lacey came in with her shoes in one hand and the ring held out in front of her.

"Look at it," she said. "Margot, look. It's real."

"I saw it. I held the box."

"You did!" She dropped onto the couch and laughed. "You're the best. Are you mad at me?"

I put a stack of sweaters in the basket.

"You told sixty people you did it all."

"I said I'd do it again." She pulled her knees up. "That's different."

"Name one thing you did."

Lacey blinked.

"I kept him laughing," she said. "Everybody knows that was the hard part."

I waited for her to say something else.

She turned the ring so it caught the lamp.

"I need the thirty-eight thousand," I said. "Four hundred. Diane promised it."

"Ugh, Margot." She said it softly. "That's between you and Diane. Don't be gross about money the night I get engaged."

"It was my money for his dressings."

"And he's so grateful," Lacey said. "He's said so. Be happy for me. Please? And you'll still do the speech?"

I zipped the second suitcase.

"Saturday," I said. "I'll see you at the fitting."

I didn't say what I would be doing there.

She smiled with her whole face and went to bed.

My aunt Bernadette, who everyone calls Bernie, lives in Grandview in a small brick house with a pink door.

I rang at three in the morning, and she opened it in her robe with a cast iron skillet in her hand.

"Margot Ellery," she said. "Who do I hit?"

"Nobody yet."

"Then come in."

A three-legged dog named Clancy hopped across the hall, sniffed my suitcase and lay down on it.

Bernie put the skillet on the stove and the kettle on after it.

I told her everything standing at her counter.

The roof, the toast, the money, and Spencer saying I always come.

She listened with her reading glasses pushed up into her gray curls.

When I finished she cracked six eggs into a bowl.

"Eat," she said. "Then sleep. Then we plan."

"Plan what?"

"How you get your money and your name back." She whisked hard. "I fed two thousand kids a day for thirty years, honey. I know how to get a person to hand over what they owe."

I slept on her sewing room daybed until ten.

I woke up to the smell of bacon and the sound of the doorbell.

Bernie answered it.

I heard her say, "Well. Look what the cat dragged in."

Then a man's low voice, tired and polite, said, "I'm sorry to come this early, ma'am. Is Margot here?"

I knew the voice before I knew why.

I came to the end of the hall in Bernie's old cardigan.

Elliot Eisenhart stood on the pink porch with a duffel bag over one shoulder.

He was Spencer's older brother.

I had met him a handful of times before he went north, and every time he had said almost nothing.

He looked thinner than I remembered, and there was gray at his temples now.

His jacket was creased from the flight.

"Margot," he said.

"Elliot. How did you find me?"

"My mother said you'd left the party." He moved the duffel to his other hand. "She said you were being difficult. I asked Lacey where you'd gone and she said she didn't know."

"So how did you find me?"

He looked at the door.

"Three Easters ago you said on a message that your aunt in Grandview had a pink door and a dog with three legs."

My stomach turned over.

"A message," I said.

"I got the voicemails," Elliot said. "The camp had no signal, so they came in batches whenever the supply plane landed."

Clancy hopped out to inspect his boots.

"They were for you to hear," I said. "I thought you never listened. You never called back, not once."

"I know."

"I told you about his burns. I told you about the nights. I cried on three of them."

"I know," he said.

He stood very straight and held the duffel strap with both hands.

"I listened to every one of them, Margot," he said. "I listened to all of them, many times."

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