Ten Days To Say I Do

Chapter 10

Elena gave up on sleep at ten past four.

She lay there and listened to the radiator knock, and to the guy upstairs who apparently did laundry at night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Jay standing beside that taxi with his shoulders up around his ears, saying, Tell Ruth I want to see her before anyone else comes in.

Common name, she told herself. Very common.

At four-thirty she got her laptop and a blanket and sat on the couch like a person who was totally fine.

She typed Julian Sterling into the search bar and felt like she was committing a crime.

There wasn't much. That was the first strange thing. A man who ran a company the size of Halden should have had pages and pages, interviews, some terrible photo at a charity gala. Instead she got a short article about the Sterling Medical Foundation, three paragraphs on a hospital wing named after somebody's grandmother, and a business blog that said Julian Sterling, 31, had taken over Halden Group "following a quiet board vote."

Quiet board vote. Like a man tiptoeing into a room.

She clicked on the foundation article. There was one picture, an old man in a gray overcoat cutting a ribbon, scissors held like he was angry at the ribbon. The caption said Harold Sterling, chairman. Underneath, a line she read three times.

Mr. Sterling is survived by his only son, Julian.

Only son.

She read it again, slower, in case she'd skipped a word. She hadn't. Only son. No nieces, no nephews, no brother with a kid who'd stormed out of the family six years ago and started going by Just Jay.

Her heart did a heavy, slow thing.

Cousins have to come from somewhere. Maybe Harold had a brother nobody wrote about. Maybe a sister. Plenty of families had people who weren't in articles. It didn't mean anything. Jay had said his father cut him off, and a man like Harold Sterling probably wouldn't talk about it to a reporter.

She sat there for a long minute, holding all of it, the cousin and the six years and the only son. Then she shut the laptop, because it was five in the morning and she was a bookkeeper, not a detective.

But she didn't go back to bed. She sat there with her knees up and the blanket around her and looked at the ring.

It really was a pretty little thing. Green stone, the color of the old bottle glass her grandfather used to line up on the shop windowsill. She turned it a few times on her finger. It wasn't loose anymore. Somewhere in the last few days she'd stopped noticing it.

That scared her more than the article did.

She was at the shop by eight, early on purpose. Mornings were when it felt most like hers. The light came in over the poetry shelf, the one with the bucket, and made the dust look like something you could pay money to see.

She flipped the sign, put the kettle on, and tried to work. She re-shelved a stack of returns. She counted the till. She did not look at the front door more than once every thirty seconds.

Jay was late. Ten past nine. He had never once been late.

She was just starting to feel a nasty little relief about it, the sort of relief you get when the dentist cancels, when the bell rang and he stepped in with two coffees and a white paper bag, a little out of breath.

"Sorry. Sorry. The queue at the bakery was insane."

"It's fine."

"You said you liked the almond ones." He held out the bag. "I wasn't sure which, so I got a few."

There were five in there. Elena looked at them and felt something rise in her throat, and it wasn't suspicion. That was the rotten part.

"I never told you I liked almond," she said.

"Wednesday. You mentioned it when you were complaining about Priya eating the last one."

She had said that. She'd forgotten. He hadn't.

It was a small thing, and it was exactly the kind of small thing that was going to wreck her.

"Thanks," she said, and took one, and bit into it so she wouldn't have to say anything else.

He drifted over to the poetry shelf and stood under the bucket, hands in his pockets. Without turning around, he said, "You're quiet."

"I didn't sleep."

"Me neither."

"Why not?"

"Same reason, probably." He glanced back over his shoulder. "I was a jerk last night. About the cousin thing. I should have said it that first day, at the bus stop."

"Yeah, you should have."

"I'm sorry."

She wanted to ask. She had the whole thing ready, the only son, the caption, the six years. It lived right on the tip of her tongue. Tell me why a newspaper says Julian Sterling doesn't have a cousin.

She looked at him standing there with sugar on his sleeve, waiting for her to be mad.

And she lost her nerve.

"Okay," she said instead.

"Okay?"

"Okay. Apology accepted. I just need you to, I don't know. Be exactly what you say you are. That's all."

His face did something complicated. For a second he looked like a man who'd been handed a very heavy thing and told to smile about it. Then he nodded.

"I'll try."

"Don't try. Do."

"That's a hard thing to ask."

"I know." She almost laughed. "It's the only thing I've got."

They worked for a while in a quieter sort of way. He dusted. She did invoices. At some point he took down the yellow-spined paperback from the shelf, the one with the tape, the one her grandfather loved, and sat on the little stool with it open on his knee. He didn't say a word. He just read, frowning, lips moving a bit on the long sentences.

She watched him from behind the register and thought, Who are you?

She had never wanted so badly to know. And she had never been so scared of what the answer might do to her.

Her phone rang at ten-thirty, a number she didn't know. She almost let it go. Then she remembered how the last unknown number had been the lawyer's office, and picked up.

"Hello?"

"Ms. Brooks. Good morning." The voice was dry and gentle, and she knew it before he said his name. "It's Arthur Whitfield. I hope I'm not interrupting."

"No, no. Mr. Whitfield. Is something wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong. Not exactly." A pause. She could hear him turning pages, or maybe a cup being set down. "Your grandfather left something in my keeping. Not in the will. Separately. He gave me instructions that I wasn't to speak of it until you had come to me with a fiancé, and I'd seen the two of you in my office."

Elena's hand tightened around the phone.

"What is it?"

"I think that's better said in person." Another pause, longer this time. "But Ms. Brooks, I should tell you. He was quite firm on one point. You are to come alone."

Across the shop, Jay looked up from the book.

She turned her back to him, her pulse loud in her ears.

"Alone," she repeated.

"Without Mr.—" Whitfield stopped, then started again, more carefully. "Without your fiancé. I'm sorry. I know how it sounds. This afternoon, if you can manage it. Three o'clock."

Then he hung up, and Elena stood there with the phone against her cheek.

Her grandfather had known Jay was coming.

How else would he have written a rule that kept him out?