Chapter 3

Nobody in the dining hall answered Adam.

He waited a moment. “All right. Which one of you can stand here and swear nobody in your family ever did something they were ashamed of?”

One of the students set his tray down. The other stared at the soup running off my chair. Neither looked at me.

Adam pulled a clean chair over and sat across from me while I finished eating. He’d grown up a Sanchez. He could have cleared the room by saying his last name. What mattered to me then was that he’d stayed long enough to make them answer for what they’d done.

When he asked me to be his girlfriend, I said yes.

Until then, I’d figured anybody who got close to me would eventually look up my mother’s name. With Adam, I could tell him a good memory of her without feeling obliged to follow it with a confession. For the first time since she died, I could talk about her and still get to sleep afterward.

At the bus stop, rain ran down the back of my coat. My palm had stopped bleeding, but I could still feel the earring post going in. I kept thinking about that chair in the dining hall and wondering how the man who’d pulled it over for me could sit beside me tonight and worry about a stain on someone else’s jewelry.

The bus came around the corner. I put a hand out for the shelter post and missed.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside. An IV line was taped to the back of my hand, and my coat hung dripping from a hook by the hospital bed. Someone had put my phone on the tray beside me.

“You’ve had a rough day,” the doctor said. “For now, I want you to rest. Let the nurse know if you feel dizzy again.”

“Okay.”

My phone rang before he reached the door.

Adam. I let it ring long enough to think I might actually leave it alone. Then I picked up.

“Valerie got something on her gown,” he said. Music and voices carried through the phone. “Go home and get Starlit Night. Bring it to the hotel. She needs something to change into.”

Valerie.

He’d told me he was marrying her before he’d even told me her name.

Starlit Night was what the designer called the gown Adam had commissioned for me. I’d stood through three fittings while she pinned tiny silver beads into the dark blue fabric. Adam said I’d wear it to the party after our wedding. When it came back from the final fitting, I’d reached for the zipper on the garment bag, and he’d covered my hand with his.

“Leave it,” he’d said. “I want the next time you touch it to be our wedding night.”

“Adam, I’m in the hospital. I have an IV in my hand.”

“You were fine when I dropped you off.”

I looked down at the tape on my hand.

“I need that dress here now,” he said. “Don’t make me come deal with you myself.”

I could have hung up. Instead, I thought about the afternoon at the campus gate, when he’d stepped between me and a woman who’d reached for my sleeve. I’d spent years feeling I owed him something for that day.

One last thing, then.

I asked the nurse to remove the IV. By the time I got a cab, it was still raining. I went home, took the garment bag from the back of my closet, and held it across my lap all the way to the hotel.

The Sanchez gala was in full swing. Through the glass doors, I could see the shipping company’s name on the wall behind the reception desk. The men at the entrance knew Adam. They’d spent the evening waving through everyone his father wanted to be seen with.

Adam called again as I got out of the cab.

“Valerie’s waiting at the front doors,” he said. “She wants to thank you. Be gracious about it.”

“All right.”

Valerie came out as I stepped under the awning. There was a dark stain down the front of her gown. I lifted the garment bag so she could take it by the hanger.

She slapped me before I got a word out.

My head snapped to the side. I caught myself against the stone wall, and the bag slipped out of my hands onto the wet pavement.

By the time I looked at her again, she was crying.

“If you didn’t want to bring it, you could’ve said so,” she said, loud enough for the men at the doors to hear. “Why did you have to throw it on the ground?”

I was still trying to understand why she’d hit me when the hotel doors opened behind her.

“Adam,” she said, turning to him. “You told me she’d behave. You said she wouldn’t give me any trouble.”

He looked at the bag on the ground. Then he hit me across the other cheek.

“I’ve let you get away with too much,” he said. “Apologize to Valerie. Now.”

I laughed. It hurt to move my mouth.

“Did you even look at me before you hit me, Adam? Where do you think the mark on my other cheek came from?”

Valerie caught his sleeve.

“I slapped her,” she said. “Are you mad at me? I lost my temper when she threw the dress down. You know how I get.”

Adam put an arm around her waist and pulled her close.

“I’m not mad,” he said. “She deserved it.”

Valerie rested her head against his shoulder. From there, she could look right at me. She smiled.

I smiled back. I could feel tears running down both cheeks, and for once I let him see them. I’d left a hospital bed to bring him the gown he’d ordered for our wedding. There was no making that look less foolish.

In three days, he’d be at the courthouse with Valerie. Caroline’s plane would be waiting for me. I could get through three days.

I looked at Adam once more. I hoped he never ended up like my father, telling strangers what he’d done after the people he owed an apology to were gone.