Chapter 17
Chapter 17:
“With me here, you can go to any wedding you want p>
Declan, not to be outdone, materialized on Bridget’s other side with the competitive urgency of a man who had been losing a race and had just spotted an opening. “And I’m here too. Not just weddings — if you want stars, I’ll climb up and get them for you.
Don’t worry about irrelevant people p>
Irrelevant people. The phrase was directed at Patricia, technically, but it landed on Lara like shrapnel — collateral damage from a weapon aimed at someone else.
Between them, Bridget performed her recovery. The tears dried. The smile emerged — brave, grateful, tremulous at the edges. She let each man comfort her, accepting their attention with the gracious modesty of a queen receiving tribute.
They sat at the next table.
Close enough to be visible, far enough to be separate.
And for the next forty minutes, Lara ate her meal and watched, in her peripheral vision, as Callum and Declan performed a duet of devotion — passing Bridget the bread basket, refilling her water, laughing at things she said, leaning in when she whispered, competing for her attention with the earnest, oblivious enthusiasm of two men who had no idea they were being managed.
Patricia, across from Lara, was gripping her steak knife with an intensity that suggested she was imagining alternative uses for it.
“I’m going to kill them,” she whispered.
“You’re not going to kill them p>
“I’m going to kill her, then p>
“You’re not going to kill anyone.
Eat your steak p>
Patricia ate her steak. It was, by all accounts, an excellent steak, though Patricia later admitted she didn’t taste a single bite.
They said goodbye outside the restaurant, on the sidewalk, in the amber light of a Halcombe evening that smelled of jasmine and car exhaust. Patricia held Lara’s hands and looked at her with an expression that contained everything she hadn’t been able to say inside.
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“Be happy in Thornfield,” she said. “And if the husband is terrible, call me. I’ll have the annulment papers drafted before you finish the sentence p>
Lara laughed.
A real laugh — the first one in days that came from somewhere genuine. “Deal p>
Patricia’s taxi pulled away. Lara watched the taillights shrink and disappear, and then she was alone on the sidewalk, in the city she was about to leave, and the evening was warm and the jasmine was blooming and she felt, for one unguarded moment, the full weight of everything she was walking away from.
She walked home. It took forty minutes on foot — she could have taken a taxi, should have taken a taxi, but her legs wanted to move and her mind wanted the time and the streets of Halcombe deserved, at least, a proper goodbye.
The house was empty when she arrived.
Callum and Declan hadn’t come home. They were, presumably, still with Bridget — still orbiting, still competing, still performing the nightly ritual of devotion that had once been directed at the woman who was now packing her last suitcase in a dark bedroom.
Lara didn’t mind. The silence was a gift.
She packed quickly.
Clothes.
Documents. The jade bracelets for Miriam that she’d nearly forgotten to remove from the shopping bag. The envelope of money that she would carry in her handbag, close to her body, because it contained something more valuable than its contents.
In the morning — her last morning — she heard them come home. Two sets of footsteps, one precise, one heavy. The sounds of luggage being moved, furniture being shifted, the logistical noise of men preparing for a relocation they didn’t know was only theirs.
Lara sat on the edge of her bed, suitcases zipped and standing at attention, and waited for Dorothy’s call.
It came at nine fifteen.