Chapter 2 The Ring Nobody Picked Up

ADRIAN POV

The front door closed, and the house went quiet in a way I didn't like.

I told myself it was a relief. I had wanted this for three years: the paperwork finished, the debt settled, the business safe. I picked up my glass of water and drank it standing, because sitting at that table with her empty chair across from me seemed unnecessarily sentimental.

"Both signatures are in order," Mr. Grady said, squaring the pages into his folder. "We file Monday morning and it is final in thirty days. Clause nine is airtight. She waved everything."

"She read it?"

"Twice. I watched her."

"And still signed." I set the glass down. "She never argued about money once, not even tonight."

"No, Mr. Crowe."

"Most people argue."

Mr. Grady took the hint and let himself out. The front door shut again, softer this time. Marcus stayed where he was, hands folded at his waist, the posture he used when he had an opinion and no permission to share it.

"Say it," I said.

"Mrs. Hale cooked this dinner herself, sir. She was in the kitchen from five. Mrs. Doyle offered to take over and she sent her home."

"Thursday was the anniversary. I assume that's what the dinner was for."

"I assume so, sir."

"It was a contract anniversary, Marcus, not a celebration." I looked at the silver lid on the lamb. Rosemary stems stuck out from under the edge where she had pressed them in by hand. "The arrangement is over. She understood that better than anyone in this room."

"She took nothing, sir. I checked her dressing room while the lawyer was packing up. Her mother's pearls, the jewelry you gave her, the car keys, all of it is laid out on the dresser. She left with her coat and her handbag."

"She's proud."

"I think she's finished, sir."

I did not have an answer for that, so I changed the subject. "Have security watch the gate until she's off the property. I don't want her stuck in the rain with no ride."

"She walked, sir. She's been gone four minutes."

"In this weather?" I turned toward the window. The rain came sideways across the driveway lights, and the gate was a gray blur. "Send a driver after her."

"I offered the driver at the door. She said she'd rather not owe the Crowes a ride."

I said nothing. Behind me a pair of arms slid around my waist, and the smell of the perfume I had bought in Milan reached me before her voice did.

"Is it really over?" Vanessa asked. "I was so afraid she would make a scene."

"She didn't."

"She's cold, Adrian." Her cheek pressed into my shoulder. "Three years in this house, and I never once saw her look glad to see you."

I tried to remember the last time Serena had looked glad to see me. I could picture her at the end of the hall in a gray dress, her hands clasped in front of her, her face open in a way I had decided not to read. I couldn't place the year. That irritated me more than it should have.

"I want to see your doctor tomorrow," I said. "We'll go together."

Her arms tightened and then loosened. "Tomorrow is Sunday. And honestly, it's too early for a scan, darling. They won't see anything until twelve weeks."

"Then I'll have Dr. Ames come to the house on Monday and do whatever can be done at eight."

"You don't trust me?"

"I trust paperwork."

She laughed, a light, quick sound. "Of course. Whatever you need." The smile stayed on her face half a second longer than the laugh did, and I noticed, because I noticed how I had built a company before I was thirty. A person who is telling the truth doesn't hold an expression like a pose.

"Marcus," I said, "arrange Dr. Ames for Monday morning. Quietly."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm exhausted," Vanessa said. "I'll take the master suite tonight, shall I? The bed in the guest room is so narrow."

"Guest room."

Her mouth opened. "Adrian, the baby..."

"The master suite was hers. It stays empty until the divorce is final." I heard how stiff it sounded and did not take it back. "Mrs. Doyle will make up the guest room."

"Mrs. Doyle won't be back until Monday."

"Then Marcus will find you sheets."

Marcus's face did something very small and very correct. Vanessa's face did something much less correct. For a moment I saw it, the flat, measuring look of a woman recalculating a bill, and then she smiled again and kissed my jaw.

"Goodnight, then," she said. "Don't stay up thinking about her."

"I don't think about her."

"Good." She went up the stairs. Her heels were quicker than they needed to be.

I waited until the hall was empty. Marcus waited with me, because he always did.

"You want to say it again," I said.

"No, sir. I said it once."

"Then go home, Marcus."

"Sir." He crossed to the door, stopped with his hand on the frame, and turned just enough that I could see one side of his face. "The ring is still on the table. I thought you would prefer that the staff not find it in the morning."

He left. The front door clicked, and the house was entirely mine.

The dining room still smelled like rosemary. The candle had burned down to a thumb of wax. Across from my place setting, her napkin lay folded in a perfect triangle, because she folded everything like that, and her water glass was untouched. Next to the glass, in a little curve of tablecloth, the ring was waiting.

I picked it up because it would have been undignified to leave it there.

It was lighter than I remembered. The gold was worn pale on one side, the way a ring gets when it spends three years sliding around a finger that is too thin for it. She had never had it resized. She had never asked. I tried to think of one thing Serena had ever asked me for, and I could not name a single item.

I turned the band toward the candle to see how scratched it was, and that was when I saw the engraving.

I had never once looked inside it. The ring had come to me in a velvet box handed over by my grandfather's secretary ten minutes before the ceremony, and I had slipped it on her finger without a glance. There was no date inside, and no initials. The words had been cut into the metal in a cramped, slanting hand that I had seen on forty years of Crowe contracts and on every birthday card of my childhood.

Forgive me, child.

My grandfather had died a month before the wedding. He had never apologized to anyone in his life, and he had certainly never met a reason to apologize to a girl he had chosen for me from a list of debts.

I stood in my dead grandfather's dining room with my ex-wife's ring in my palm, and for the first time that night I wondered what, exactly, he had thought he needed to be forgiven for.