Chapter 10: Refused

"What are you doing?" Jerome said, from the mattress.

I turned around with the envelope in my hand.

He was up on one elbow, his hair flattened on one side, and his face went still when he saw what I held.

"It's addressed to me," I said.

"Yes."

"It's marked Refused. In my husband's handwriting."

"I know whose handwriting it is."

"You never told me you wrote to me."

"Rule three," Jerome said. "You don't ask me why."

"I'm not asking why. I'm asking what it says."

He sat up. For a long moment the stove ticked and the wind threw snow at the glass.

"Open it," he said.

I tore the flap.

One sheet, folded in thirds, in black ink.

Hallie, you shouldn't marry him. I can't tell you why in a letter. Call me before Saturday. Anything you need, I'll be there in an hour. Jerome.

I read it twice.

Below it was a phone number I had never seen before.

"I never saw this," I said. "It came to my old apartment, and the mail was forwarded to the Lang house. Dirk must have taken it from the pile."

"He mailed it back the same week."

"You thought I read it."

"I thought you read it and married him anyway."

He said it quietly, and I saw how long he had carried it.

"I stood at the back of the church at your wedding," he said. "I thought if you looked round, I'd go up the aisle. You never looked round."

"I didn't know you were there."

"Dirk did."

I put the letter down on the workbench.

"I thought you were helping me to get at him," I said. "That a Lang was taking a Lang's wife, and I was the way in."

"I don't care what Dirk loses."

"Then what do you care about?"

"You," he said. "Since a Sunday five years ago when you carried my father's plate across the room and told Margaret she'd forgotten the salt."

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