Chapter 2 - The Last Offer
A month before the wedding, he showed up at my apartment with a fistful of roses, a diamond bracelet, and one final pitch.
"I can give you everything you've ever wanted," he said.
The bracelet threw little sparks of light from its velvet box. I looked at it, then at him.
"You still don't know what that is."
His smile went thin. "Don't be dramatic, Nora."
"I'm not being dramatic."
"You're about to marry a man who patches fences for a living."
"And you think that makes him beneath you."
"I think you're punishing somebody. Your parents. Me. Yourself. Take your pick."
"No," I said. "I'm choosing."
He stepped in closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne. "You'll get sick of the mud. You'll get sick of tiny rooms and grocery budgets and standing in a barn pretending cider is champagne. Give it a year."
I looked him dead in the eye.
Then I closed the door in his face.
Three weeks later, I married Caleb.
We didn't rent a ballroom. We had the reception in his old red barn, strung with lights his cousins hung off the rafters that afternoon. The food came from neighbors who showed up carrying covered dishes, arguing cheerfully about whose potato salad was better. Caleb's grandmother had passed two years back, so her oldest friend baked our cake instead — three lopsided layers that tasted like heaven.
We toasted with homemade apple cider.
I had never been happier in my life.
Caleb was nervous all day. Not the runaway-groom kind of nervous. More like a man carrying something heavy he was finally almost ready to put down.
During our first dance, I murmured, "You're quiet."
He smiled into my hair. "I'm always quiet."
"Not like this."
"I keep thinking my grandmother would've loved you."
"I wish I'd gotten to meet her."
His hand tightened against my back. "You will. In a way."
I pulled back to look at him. "What does that mean?"
He kissed my forehead. "You'll see."
I should have pushed. But right then his uncle started clapping on the wrong beat, somebody knocked a tray of biscuits onto the floor, and the whole barn was laughing again.
My parents left early. Preston wasn't invited, but I felt him there anyway — maybe because half the guests knew the story, maybe because my mother hugged me goodbye like she was standing at a graveside.
"You can still come home," she whispered.
"I am home," I said.
She looked past me at Caleb, who was helping his youngest cousin haul empty cider jugs toward the truck.
"Then I hope you're right."
By the time the last car rolled down the gravel drive, the farm had gone still. The lights glowed soft in the rafters. My hem was gray with dust. Caleb had frosting dried on one sleeve.
He took my hand. "There's one place I need to show you."
I laughed. "What is it? A surprise honeymoon?"
He shook his head. "No."
Something in the way he said it made me stop smiling.
May you like
"We can wait until tomorrow," he added quickly.
"No. You brought it up. Show me."
