“A man ought to know how to fry an egg,” Freddy told their son. “Even if he never has to do it.”
Claire had written letters.
First to her sister, to tell her what had happened. She avoided any mention of pie. Next, she wrote her parents, doing much the same in a very different tone. To Ember, she wrote only one line:
He refuses to leave.
Ember would understand.
Freddy had spent the days engrossed in the remainder of those stories she’d written, the fairy tales, and discussing the notes that the others had left in the margins. Once he’d read through all of them, he took to transcribing them, sitting at the kitchen table for almost an entire night as his quill scratched over a stack of parchment he’d gotten God knows where.
“We’ll have to find a publisher in London,” he’d said to her, after coming to bed entirely too late. “I don’t trust anyone this far-flung to do it justice.”
“A publisher?” she had repeated, realizing as she said it that she should have known that was what he was doing. “Goodness, do you think they’ll be interested?”
He had only laughed at her, kissed her head, and told her to go to sleep.
She didn’t go to sleep. She waited until his breathing had evened, until his restless little kicks had stilled, and she crept up out of the bed and back out into the kitchen to her dower box. She hadn’t had a moment alone with it since that night back at the Nook, and there was one final piece of her story in the box that she wanted to retrieve.
It took some doing, wiggling up the false bottom, but she did achieve it after a time. And there, nestled in the rear corner, wasstill the little satin bag she’d put there many years prior, when she’d named this box for all the harsh lessons she’d learned.
Her wedding ring was inside.
She sat with it for a time, setting it on the table in front of her and admiring the way it caught the light from the lanterns outside. Part of her, absurdly, feared it would not fit anymore, as though her finger had doubled in size in the years since she’d taken it off.
But it did.
It slid onto her hand like it had never left it, hugging her flesh just tight enough to be secure without bringing discomfort. It gleamed like it had been freshly polished and not abandoned in that little bag for so long.
That was how Freddy found her.
He didn’t say anything, simply walking into the kitchen and pulling out the chair next to hers to ease into. His pajamas were wrinkled, his hair fuzzy. He looked beautiful even so, impossible not to gaze upon, once he was close.
She smiled at him, offering him the hand with the ring freshly restored to it. He accepted it immediately.
“You know,” she said softly, afraid to disturb the peace around them, “I put it on and took it off a thousand times after I left. Even when it was threatening to draw blood because of how puffy my fingers got while I was pregnant. Off and on, over and over again. For over a year.”
“What made you stop?” he asked, twisting it around her finger between the pads of his.
“Coming to Crooked Nook,” she answered with a little shrug. “I thought your mother and grandmother would see it and hate me for still wearing it, so I put it away. I realize now that not having it on was also offensive, of course. Retrospection is often a little sharp.”
“Ah,” said Freddy, looking at her softly. “About that. Would you stay right there for a moment? Right there. Do not go anywhere.”
She hesitated, blinking up at him as he stood, touched the crown of her head as though to ensure she stay put, and then hurried out of the kitchen. She sat in the emptiness for a moment, looking down at her hand and mimicking the motion he’d made, twisting her ring in circles around the base of her finger.
She could hear him fumbling around somewhere down the hallway. She could hear the rummaging of bags and the hiss of annoyance and the flipping of leather flaps.
When he returned, he was carrying a lantern in one hand and an envelope in the other, one of the oversized ones Claire always associated with her father’s law firm, secured first with a bit of glued string and then second with a wax seal.
“What is that?” she asked wryly. “Are you suing me?”
He chuckled, taking his seat again and adjusting the lantern on the table between them. “Not yet,” he teased. “Should I?”
“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
He grinned at her. “My brother is a barrister.”
“So are all of mine,” she reminded him, starting to giggle. She swiped her hand forward, making like she was going to snatch the envelope from him without actually intending to. “Well? What is it.”
