Chapter 4

Hudson stopped just inside the door. His eyes went straight to the suitcase at my feet.

“Where are you going?”

I pulled the zipper the rest of the way around. “Home.”

He crossed the room, took the suitcase by the handle, and shoved it into the corner. One of the wheels struck the baseboard.

“Come on, Tabitha.” His voice softened. “You don’t have any family. Where else would you go?”

He said it the same way he used to tell me to put my keys down and stay the night. Back then, I’d thought it meant he wanted me there.

“I know you’re upset about yesterday,” he went on. “But the wedding was for the guests. Once we make it official at City Hall, we’ll be husband and wife. That’s what counts.”

I almost laughed.

Some of the men in Hudson’s crew had put off a wedding for years because they hated the idea of an audience. They still made it to City Hall. Among my friends, the longest anyone had waited was five years.

I’d given Hudson eight. When he’d promised me a home, I’d thought he meant one I wouldn’t have to ask him to let me keep.

Whenever I brought up getting a marriage license, he had a meeting he couldn’t move or a man coming in from out of town. The one time he agreed to meet me at the clerk’s office, I got there when it opened. By closing, I knew which clerk kept a sweater on the back of her chair and which guard turned off the ticket machine.

Hudson showed up as the clerk was packing her bag. I held out my number and asked her to give us five more minutes.

Then he told me he’d forgotten his ID.

I hadn’t brought it up since. But I wanted to hear what he’d say with my suitcase already packed.

“Fine. Let’s go to City Hall today and apply for the license. Do that with me, and I’ll let yesterday go.”

His face changed before I’d finished.

“Today? Jean just got back.” He lowered his voice, as if she might hear us from the next room. “I don’t know how she’d take it. I’m worried she might do something to herself.”

I let him hear the silence that followed.

“Give her a little time to settle in,” he said. “Then I’ll go with you. I swear.”

“Forget it.”

I still needed my ID to leave. I knelt in front of the safe, entered the code, and took my card from the drawer where Hudson kept our passports and the papers he wouldn’t leave at the club.

Hudson caught me by the arm and hauled me up before I’d found my footing. I stumbled. The back of my hand caught the edge of the open safe door, and I went down hard.

He bent to help me. Then he saw the ID between my fingers and pulled his hand back.

“What do you want from me, Tabitha? I said I’d marry you. Why do you have to push?”

“I’m taking my ID.”

“Jean was joking yesterday. I thought you understood that.” He straightened. “We’re friends. That’s all.”

“Friends?”

I got to my feet on my own. A drop of blood hit the hardwood. I pressed my thumb against the cut.

“She showed up in a wedding dress. You left me at the altar and spent the night alone with her.” I held up the hand he’d just pulled away from. “Which part was I supposed to laugh at?”

His lips tightened. Then he sighed and pulled me against him. I kept my injured hand between us so he wouldn’t press on it.

“Nothing happened last night,” he said. “I told Jean there’s no chance of us getting back together. I only went after her because I needed to know why she disappeared eight years ago. I’d had that question in my head since prison. I couldn’t just let her walk away again without asking.”

He rested his chin against my hair.

“You’re the one who matters to me. I’ve told you that.”

I’d heard it often enough to know what usually came next.

On my birthday, we’d driven up into the mountains. We’d barely sat down to eat when one of his men called to say he thought he’d seen Jean at the airport. Hudson took the car. By the time I found somebody willing to drive me back down, it was dark. He called later to tell me the woman at the airport hadn’t even been her.

Another time, I was in bed with a fever when he heard Jean was sick overseas and couldn’t get the medicine she wanted. He packed up our last bottle of fever reducer and sent it to her. I was barely out of bed for a week. For the first two days, I kept checking the bathroom cabinet, sure he’d picked up another bottle on his way home.

And every anniversary, he wrapped two gifts. Mine went on the kitchen table. Jean’s went into the locked drawer of his desk.

For years, I’d thought it meant something that Hudson remembered our dates without being reminded. Then I learned our first kiss had fallen on the anniversary of his first kiss with Jean. The day he asked me to be his was the same date he’d once asked her.

He’d never needed to put a new date on the calendar.