Chapter 2

"Stop. Who is he?"

The note hung in the air between them, the lamp shining through its old crease. Rain slid down the ninth-floor glass. Her bare feet had gone numb on the floor, and still she said nothing.

"I'm asking you a simple thing," Colin said. "On our wedding night."

"It isn't simple."

"Then make it simple." He lowered the page an inch, not far. "A name. That's all. You give me a name and I'll decide what it costs."

She sat down on the end of the bed. Her slip caught cold against her legs. The paperback lay where it had fallen, pages fanned, the shape of the note still pressed into them.

"I need you to trust me for one night," she said. "That's all I'm asking. One night."

"That's the one thing you can't ask tonight."

He set the note on the dresser, face up, where they could both see her own handwriting. Then he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, and that was worse than the shouting, the way he could stand so still.

The clock on the nightstand turned to 2:15 before either of them moved again.

She had tried, in that quiet, to build a lie that would hold. Every version fell apart at the second question. He knew her handwriting. He knew her silences. She had married a man who kept score of what people hid, and she had known that about him, and loved him anyway.

"You went to the window three times," Colin said finally.

"What?"

"At the reception. You kept looking at the doors." He pushed off the wall. "I thought you were tired. People are allowed to be tired at their own wedding."

"I was tired."

"You were watching for somebody."

Her hand found the small scar on her wrist and pressed it. He noticed. He noticed everything.

"I saw him, Thea."

The room seemed to tip. "Saw who."

"The guy in the gray suit. Back row, by the side door, left before the pictures." Colin's voice had gone flat and careful, the voice he used when something hurt too much to be loud. "I saw him look at you. I saw you look back. And I waited. All through dinner, all through the toasts, I kept waiting for you to say, Colin, there's someone here I need to tell you about."

"You should have said something."

"I was giving you the chance to." He nodded at the note. "Then I picked up your book."

She closed her eyes. There was no road left that didn't go through the truth. She had promised him that herself, four hours ago, with a glass in her hand.

"His name is Simon."

Colin went very still.

"The note's to Simon. Three years ago we worked the same distribution center, out on the west side. He clocked in late one too many times and the gate guard was writing it in. I told the guard he'd already badged through. The guard believed me." She opened her eyes. "They caught it on the log. Simon didn't get written up. I did."

"You lied for him."

"I lied for him."

"And you kept the note he wrote back."

"He didn't write it. I wrote it. That's my hand." She reached for her phone on the nightstand, slow, so he could see her hands. "He left me a message after. I saved it. I don't know why I saved it. Yes, I do."

She found it in her voicemails, three years deep, the date stamped under his name, and she pressed play and held the phone up between them the way he had held the note.

A young man's voice came out, rough, embarrassed, grateful. Hey. It's me. I heard what you did at the gate. You didn't have to take that for me. I owe you one, Thea. I mean it. I'll pay you back someday, I swear.

The message ended. The room held the silence it left.

"That's Simon," Colin said.

"That's Simon."

She watched the jealousy drain out of his face and something colder move in behind it, and she understood, too late, that she had traded one wound for a deeper one.

"My brother," he said. "You've been keeping a note to my brother in a book, and tonight he's in the back of the chapel, and you had all day."

"Colin-"

"I've been waiting all day for you to tell me. You didn't."