Not His Bride Anymore novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bet

In her mother's kitchen the old bet comes out, Elliot refuses to be the prize, and Helen slides over a photo of Caleb and Savannah.

My mother had made soup.

At one in the morning, in her navy robe, she had a pot going on the stove and three bowls out on the kitchen table.

She put a blanket over my shoulders before she said anything.

"Eat first," Helen said. "Then shout."

I ate.

It was the chicken and rice she used to make me when I had the flu, and it was the first thing I had swallowed all night that did not taste like paper.

Elliot came in from parking the car and stopped inside the doorway.

My mother pointed at the third bowl.

He sat down at the far end of the table.

"You're not going to ask what happened," I said.

"I know what happened."

"How?"

"You called me at midnight and said you'd lost." My mother stirred her soup. "You have never once lost anything and called me about it."

I put down my spoon.

"I said I'd lost the bet. You said Elliot was at the curb. You knew, Mom. How did you know?"

"I didn't know about the brownies." She did not look away from me. "I knew about the boy."

I was too tired to ask what the difference was.

"Fine," I said. "The bet is lost. I'm twenty-four. I'm not married to Caleb, and I won't be. So tell me what happens now."

My mother set down her spoon too.

"At this table," she said, "when you were eighteen, you said that if you weren't his wife by twenty-five, you would admit I was right and marry whoever I picked."

"I remember."

"You said it with your fork in your fist. You said it to make me stop talking."

"I remember, Mom."

"And I said, then I pick Elliot Wray."

The spoon in Elliot's hand stopped halfway to his mouth.

He lowered it into the bowl very slowly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You what?"

My mother turned her head.

"Because your father trusted me with his half of the shipping firm when he was dying," she said. "And because you are the one man I know who has never once lied to me."

"That isn't a reason to pick a husband."

"It was the best one I had that night."

I stared at her.

She did not look sorry.

Elliot pushed back his chair.

He did not stand up.

He put both palms flat on the table and looked at the wood.

"Helen. You made a wager with an eighteen-year-old girl, about me, and you never told me."

"It was a girl shouting at her mother. I didn't think it would come due."

"But you kept my name in it."

"I kept it in my pocket," my mother said. "Which is a different thing."

He looked up at last, and not at her.

He looked at me.

"I didn't know," he said. "I swear to you. Not until this second."

I believed him.

His face was too plain to be lying.

"A bet isn't a marriage," Elliot said, and his voice was quiet and level. "Nobody gets to be handed to anybody. I don't want to be collected, and she shouldn't be paid out."

"Thank you," I said.

It came out sharper than I meant.

"I'm not marrying anyone, Mom. Not him, not anybody you pick. I'm twenty-four, and I just left the man I thought I'd be with forever. I am not trading him for another one tonight."

"I'm not asking you to," my mother said.

"You just said the bet came due."

"I said it was lost. It doesn't mean you have to pay on the first of the month." She folded her hands. "You have ninety-eight days until you're twenty-five. Don't marry anyone out of anger. Don't marry anyone at all, if you like."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want you not to go back to that apartment."

"I'm not going back."

"Yes, you are," my mother said. "Tomorrow. For your things. And you are not going alone."

I opened my mouth to say she did not get to decide that either.

She reached to the chair beside her and set a thin gray folder on the table.

She slid it across to me with two fingers.

Inside was a photograph, printed on plain paper.

A wooden dock at the edge of a lake, gray with winter.

A man and a woman in coats, sitting very close together with their feet over the water.

Caleb had his arm around Savannah's waist.

She had her head on his shoulder.

The date in the corner said Saturday.

It was the same Saturday Caleb told me he was in client meetings downtown.

"That one's from this week," my mother said. "The rest go back two years."

I turned the page.

Another dock.

Another coat.

A restaurant I did not know, Caleb's hand on her knee under a tablecloth.

"I've had a man on that boy for two years," my mother said.

I looked up.

Not at her.

At Elliot.

He had not moved since she opened the folder, and he was not looking at the photographs.

His face did not change at all.

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