Chapter 17: Her Choice

I folded the nurse's letter into my pocket and went down the outside stair without a word.

Winslow came after me.

The Livingstone garden was dark, and the lawn was wet under my shoes.

I stopped by the hedge and turned around.

"Don't answer yet," I said. "Let me say mine first."

"Coralie."

"I'm not leaving you."

He stood very still.

"I don't know what the pact says," I said. "I don't know what your family has decided about me, or what Winifred has kept in that glass case."

"I know that you went quiet in a dressing room and told me you couldn't say."

"Yes."

"I know you told me the truth about the quiet instead of lying."

"I did."

"That's why I'm choosing you before I read it," I said. "So nobody can tell me later that a piece of paper did it."

His throat moved.

He took a step, then another, and he put his forehead against mine.

"Now you can tell me," I said. "And then I'm going to be furious."

"That's fair."

"It's the second thing you've hidden from me."

"It is."

"The first one was your name. This one is my life."

"I know," he said, and his voice cracked. "I'll stand here for as long as you like."

"You won't. We're driving to Mercer Island."

Winifred was awake at midnight in her study, in a quilted robe, with her cane across her knees.

She did not seem surprised to see us.

"I did wonder when," she said. "Sit."

I sat.

Winslow stood behind my chair with a hand on its back.

She unlocked the glass case with a small brass key and laid a yellow page in front of me.

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