The Bride He Already Own

The First Lie

I have twenty minutes in the car and I use every single one of them.

By the time I pull into the hospital parking lot I have a story. Not elaborating gets you caught. Simple and specific and tight enough to hold under a father's gentle questions.

Eight months ago. A professional event. We kept in touch slowly, the way things do when neither person is looking for anything. He asked me to marry him and I said yes because I was certain and he doesn't do anything without being certain first.

Thin. I know it's thin. But my father is not a suspicious man. He loves me and he wants good things for me and people in hospital beds want good news badly enough that they sometimes walk toward it on their own. He will meet Caden by the end of the week and Caden will be exactly what that room needs him to be. I believe that without fully understanding why.

I have thought this through. I am ready.

Then I open the door to my father's room and Aunt Patrice looks up from the chair beside his bed and every prepared thing I brought rearranges itself into something harder.

---

My father is awake.

That matters because yesterday he was sleeping and losing an argument with the bed. Today he is sitting up with better color and he smiles when he sees me close enough to his old smile that my chest does something I don't have time for right now.

"There she is," he says.

"Here I am." I lean down and kiss his forehead. I pull the chair up on his other side so the bed sits between Patrice and me. Small move. Probably obvious. I do it anyway.

Patrice watches me with the patience of someone who already knows what you're going to say and is simply waiting to see if you're honest enough to say it.

She has four kids. She has never once been fooled by any of them. I know this because her youngest, my cousin Derek, spent twenty-three years trying and failing every single time.

I am going to try anyway.

---

"I have something to tell you," I say to my father.

He reaches over and turns the television down. Patrice doesn't move.

"I've been seeing someone. About eight months. It got serious and I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure where it was going and I didn't want to name something that might turn into nothing." I pause. "It didn't turn into anything."

My father goes quiet. He looks at me with careful eyes, deciding how he feels before he shows it.

"Who," he says.

"His name is Caden Cross."

Silence.

Then — "Cross Capital Group."

"Yes."

He is quiet for a moment. Then something in his face settles. No surprise. Something closer to a man who has been waiting a long time for his daughter to belong to something good and is relieved it has finally arrived. "How serious," he says.

I hold his gaze. "He asked me to marry him."

My father's eyes go wet fast. He doesn't let them spill. He just reaches across the blanket and takes my hand and says, "Nora." Just my name. Nothing else.

I smile at him and I pour everything I have into it because he needs it to be real and I need him to believe it is and for one moment in that room I let myself pretend it costs me nothing.

Patrice says, "Eight months."

I look at her.

"Eight months and nobody knew." Not sharp. Not accusing. She says it the way she reads a contract identifying the part that doesn't sit flush with everything around it. "That's a long time to keep something serious quiet."

"I'm a private person."

"You are," she agrees. "Always have been." She tilts her head. "And Caden Cross private too?"

"Very."

"So two private people kept eight months of something serious completely quiet and then he proposed." A brief pause. "Fast."

Gerald says, "Patrice."

"I'm asking questions, Gerald. That's not the same as saying something."

I look at my aunt across my father's bed and I don't look away.

"I stopped apologizing for things that don't follow a neat timeline a long time ago," I say. "Caden doesn't do anything without being certain. Neither do I. We're both certain."

Patrice holds my gaze.

I hold hers back.

The room sits completely still.

Then my father squeezes my hand and says, "Pat. Let her be happy."

Patrice looks at me for one more second. Then she picks up the magazine on the side table and says nothing else and I breathe through my nose slowly and tell myself that surviving the next hour is enough.

---

I stayed longer than I planned.

My father wants to talk and I let him. He asks about the wedding and I say we're not rushing. He asks if Caden is good to me and I say yes without a pause because a pause would cost more than the word. He asks if I'm happy.

I look at him in that bed with his color better than yesterday and his eyes doing something I haven't seen in months.

Hope. My father's face carries hope and it is the most expensive thing I have ever seen and I would sign that contract a hundred more times to keep it there.

I tell him I'll bring Caden to meet him by the end of the week. He says he'd like that quietly, like something he doesn't want to jinx by saying too loudly.

I make him laugh twice before I leave. Old jokes. Things that belong to just us.

---

The parking lot is cold.

Chicago cold doesn't ask permission. It gets inside your coat and your collar and the space between your fingers and stays there regardless of what you want. I have my keys out and I'm almost at my car when footsteps hit the asphalt behind me.

I know before I turn around.

Patrice stopped a few feet back. She didn't grab her coat on the way out and she doesn't seem to feel the temperature. She looks at me now the same as she did in the room except there is no Gerald between us and she doesn't have to measure anything.

"How much trouble is the company in," she says.

I go still.

"Gerald doesn't check his own accounts. He trusts you with all of it." She pauses. "But I talked to Raymond last week and Raymond had a look on his face I've only seen once before. The day he sat across from your father and told him your mother was gone and not coming back." Her voice stays even. Careful. "So I'll ask you again. How bad is it?"

The whole morning sits on top of me like something with weight.

"I'm handling it," I say.

She studies my face. Long enough that I feel it.

Then she says, "Does Caden Cross know your mother?"

I don't follow it for a second. "His mother knew her. He told me this morning —"

"Not his mother." Her voice drops. "Him. Does he know your mother personally?"

I say nothing.

Her expression shifts into something I have never seen on her face before and I have known this woman my entire life. It isn't fear exactly. It sits right beside fear and it is worse because Patrice has never been frightened easily. She steps closer and lowers her voice.

"Your mother didn't just leave, Nora. There are things you don't know. Things Gerald decided years ago that you were better off not knowing." She stops. Presses her lips together hard. Then — "Be careful. That's all I'm telling you right now. Be very careful with this man."

She turns and walks back toward the entrance.

I stand in the cold and watch her go and my mind pulls up every detail from this morning at once. A contract was signed three days before I agreed to anything. A photograph clipped behind his signature. Four words in clean unhurried handwriting. A mother who left on a Tuesday and never once called.

And a man on the forty-second floor who looked at me like he already knew exactly how this ends.

I get in my car.

I haven't started it for a long time.