I take a deep breath, look out the door to where my car sits in the driveway. “I’m sure you have no reason to believe me. But I had intended to leave my job even before I—well. Before I came into the money you mentioned. That doesn’t excuse how long I stayed. It doesn’t excuse anything, really. Your family went through something terrible.”
He lowers his head at this, adjusts his booted feet on the carpeted floors. “My parents moved to Florida. I still don’t want you to contact them. But that’s where they are.”
“Are they happy there?”
He looks up at me, and I’m on the bottom of his shoe again. I hear everything he’s thinking in that look. Of course they’re not fucking happy. Their son is dead.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, uselessly. “I realize there is nothing I can say. Nothing I can do.” I look at him one last time, offer a brief, placating downward tip of my chin before setting my fingers on the screen’s door handle.
“There is nothing you can say.” Blunt and honest. I almost admire him for making sure he sticks it to me, in the end. For not making it easy on me. “But there may be something you can do.”
My hand stills and my head bows, almost like I’m waiting for a benediction. Iwanthim to tell me what to do, and I am not—maybe strangely, maybe naively—afraid at all. Aiden is angry, but he’s not cruel, or at least this what I tell myself. All the possibility of that damn vase feels like it’s in this room with us, and I think maybe,maybeit wasn’t such a terribleidea after all.
“Marry me,” he says, and it’s a wonder I don’t faintall over again.
Chapter 2
Aiden
In my thirty-one years of life, I have said and done a lot of stupid shit, but not one single thing so stupid as saying the wordsMarry meto Zoe Ferris.
I don’t mean it, of course, but I don’t rush to clarify, mostly because it takes me a few seconds to get my mouth and brain reconnected. Long seconds where Zoe stays still, where I watch her profile and make sure that she’s steady and that she still has good color in her face. This is the first time I notice that she is beautiful. When I saw her first, in a small, professionally taken headshot on her former firm’s website, I did not think beyond what my intention had been: to imagine what my parents had seen that day when Aaron’s life was weighed and measured, counted out in dollars. When I saw her again, standing in my driveway, I did not think beyond getting her off my property. And when I saw her close up, having caught her right before she hit the pavement, I did not think beyond treating her.
But now. Now I notice that she’s beautiful, her blond hair straight and cut blunt past her shoulders, her eyelashes long and dark, her top lip almost as fully plumpas her bottom.
When she turns to face me, I clear my throat and speak again. “Not a real marriage. Obviously.”
“Whateverthatis,” she says, an unsubtle thread of sarcasm in her voice. “Explain.”
If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t believe that this woman had, minutes ago, turned the whitest shade of pale and crumpled in my front yard. Her cheeks are pink and her posture is ramrod straight; her voice is sharp, crystal clear, every word she says articulated fully.
But Ididsee it myself, and at least my ridiculous proposal has provided me an opportunity for some professional peace of mind. “It’s a long story,” I say. “How about you come on in and sit down, andI’ll tell you.”
She cocks her head at me, amber eyes flashing with recognition. “I released you from all your obligations to me. I told you; I feel absolutely fine.”
“You also asked if there was anything you could do for me, and I told you there was. Was that just you blowing smoke up my ass?” Jesus, my attitude. My mother would bean me—hard—if she heard me talk to a guest like this, even if that guest is a sworn enemyof our family.
“No,” she says, and takes her hand from the door handle.
Success. I guide her back inside, snag her water from the coffee table, and walk her through to the kitchen, pulling out a chair for her at the small table in the corner. When she sits, it’s prim and proper control: back straight against the chair, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap.
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” I say, setting the water down in front of her.
“I don’t want a sandwich.”
“It’ll be peanut butter and jelly,” I say, ignoring her and pulling down a loaf of bread from off the topof the fridge.
“I said I don’t want one.”
“Are you allergic to peanut butter, jelly, or bread?”
“No.”
“Okay. Then I’m going to make you this damn sandwich.” It’s like I can feel my mother’s anger and embarrassment all the way from Florida. “You can eat it or not, but it’ll make me feel better to makeit. All right?”
There’s a beat of silence, and I wonder what expression she must be leveling at my back right now. “All right.” I think there may be a thread of amusement in there, something slightly lighter than what I’ve heard in her voice up to now.
I pull the peanut butter and jelly from the fridge, grab a knife from the drawer. Now that she’s in here—now that I actually have to say out loud the insane idea that had popped into my head when she’d been preparing to walk out, I don’t know where to begin.You haven’t said anything yet, dumbass,I think.You can still take this back.But something—someone, I guess, stops me. This idea, crazy as it is, may do some good for Aaron.For the memory of Aaron,Icorrect myself.
