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She laughed and kept walking.

I went back two weeks later. Now I sat on the edge of the bed with the box open beneath the lamp and wondered whether knowing what ring she liked counted for anything when I’d never bothered asking whether she wanted the life I planned to attach to it.

Friday was four days away. My mother had probably finalized the flowers and Bitsy had probably finalized everything else. My father apparently had financial projections built around a marriage that hadn’t happened yet. And Lorrie had spent the past week asking questions I should have answered before she ever needed to ask them.

I closed the box. I had to tell her. Not Friday, when everyone would be dressed for dinner and watching us.

Before.

Tomorrow, I decided. I would call her in the morning and ask to see her alone, then tell her about the firm, my father, and about the trust.

Somehow I would have to explain that while initially I’d only wanted to marry her because we fit, as time had passed I’d fallen in love with her, and now I wanted to marry her because I wanted all of her tomorrows.

I put the ring back in the drawer, closed it, and went to bed without calling her.

14

Lorrie

Monday — August 20, 1984

By the time the last customer left, I’d mostly stopped being angry with Dean. He should have told me about Martin Vale, and he knew it. He’d apologized without making excuses, which left me with Paul, Alan, both our families, a trust I hadn’t known existed, and more than enough anger to get me through the rest of the night.

Dean closed the store at ten, but I hadn’t left with the last customer. I’d pretended to straighten the cassette rack while Brian counted the drawer. After Dean had double-checked the count, Brian left with a salute and a warning that Otis had eaten something earlier off the floor, maybe a banana peel or a sock.

Dean didn’t say anything until the front door was locked, the display lights were off, and he’d returned from walking Otis, who had thankfully barfed up the sock.

“You want to go upstairs?”

I nodded.

His apartment felt different tonight. It was still too warm, the windows pushed open to catch the breeze, and the kitchen still held the faint smell of coffee. A stack of records leaned against the wall beside the sofa, his sister’s photograph still sat on the shelf, and the same Louis L’Amour paperback rested face-down on the little table near the chair.

Nothing had changed, except everything had.

He opened the refrigerator. “Wine cooler?”

“No.”

He looked over his shoulder. “That bad?”

“Yes.”

He closed the refrigerator without taking anything out.

For a while neither of us spoke. Traffic moved below us. Someone laughed on the sidewalk, followed by the squeal of brakes and a car horn. Somewhere farther down State Street, music drifted out of an open doorway and disappeared again.

He sat in the chair across from the sofa, elbows on his knees. He’d heard everything the investigator had said, so there was no point in pretending I needed to explain the facts to him.

“I keep trying to make it all make sense,” I said.

Dean looked at me but didn’t say anything.

I let out a sigh, so tired of thinking about it. “The money. The trust. Alan’s firm. How much Paul knows.” I folded my arms, then unfolded them because I couldn’t get comfortable.

“I keep thinking if I rearrange the pieces into the right order, then maybe I’ll find an innocent version.”

“Have you?”