Chapter 4

Rosalie's POV

The plastic bag had gone from cool to warm in my grip, my fingertips white.

Two pounds of live lobster. The travel agency had said the booking would be confirmed today, and I'd wanted to tell him over dinner.

Three days ago I'd sent over the scanned copy of our marriage certificate, holding up my phone, listening to the screen reader announce that the file had uploaded. Grasse. The valley of roses. He'd promised to describe the sunrise to me over and over, until I could see it for myself.

"Rosalie, why aren't you saying anything?" Chloe surfaced from the kiss, her hand landing on my arm, her breath still uneven. "Is it too sudden? Are you tired?"

"I—" My throat clicked. "No. I'm fine. I just didn't want to interrupt."

A thin, useless little laugh escaped me.

"You sounded so happy."

"Oh, Rosalie." She squeezed my arm, and I could hear the smile in it, that satisfaction curling at the edge of her voice.

She only ever called him Bry. Even now she was "considerately" preserving my last shred of dignity, sparing the blind woman from knowing whose mouth she'd just kissed.

How funny.

"She looks so pale." Chloe turned toward the living room, her voice going soft and hurried, pitched just loud enough for everyone to hear. "Here, sweetheart, let me help you sit down and rest."

"I'm all right," I said. "Don't trouble yourself."

"It's no trouble. What kind of family would I be if I couldn't do this much?" She was already guiding me toward the couch by the elbow, her fingers warm, her touch gentle.

She finished performing her kindness, caring for the poor blind woman, then straightened, walked back to that man, and slipped her arm through my husband's.

She had no idea that behind these dark lenses, my newly healed eyes caught every curve of her smile.

I set the bag of lobster down by my feet. Gently. My hands were the only part of me still answering to me, and I made them obey.

"I'm a little tired," I heard myself say. My voice came out frighteningly calm. "I'll go back to my room."

"Want some help?" This time Chloe didn't even turn her head.

"No. I know the way."

"Careful with the corner, then." She said it lightly, almost in passing, while beside her someone laughed at something else entirely.

I stood and reached for the wall. Found it. Then I edged along it, one careful, blind step at a time, feeling my way toward the bedroom.

Behind me drifted her honeyed sigh.

"Rosalie's probably just worn out. She keeps herself shut in her room all day, barely says a word. Losing her sight has been harder on her than she lets on."

A murmur of agreement rose at my back.

"You've given so much for her, Chloe. Truly."

"She really ought to learn to let go. You can't drag someone along forever."

"That's the truth. It isn't good for either of you."

"You've got such a good heart, Chloe. You really do. Not many people could put up with all this."

I clenched my fist, nails digging into my palm.

Through the hallway. To the bedroom door. I shut it behind me and sagged against the panel, then slid slowly down it until I was sitting on the floor.

So that was it. I'd heard it in his own voice, watched it happen through the lenses I was hiding behind. Bryce didn't want me, and he hadn't for a long time. Somewhere in that walk down the hall I'd already stopped fighting it. You can ignore a wound for months, until someone pries it open and names it out loud, and then there's nowhere left to hide.

Still, one thing held. I had the document. The marriage registration. Whatever lived in his heart, in the eyes of the law I was his wife. That was the ground under my feet. Let the whole living room whisper and snicker; it couldn't touch that one fact.

On the nightstand, my phone lit up. The travel agency, the third call this week. I'd submitted the certified copy to book the Grasse package before I was even discharged, and they'd been chasing me ever since to confirm some detail.

Between the eye checkups, the follow-ups, the endless hours of just learning to feel my way around a room again, I'd kept putting it off. I'd meant to pass it to Bryce and never found the moment. For a second my thumb hovered over the red icon.

I answered anyway.

"Miss Fairfax? This is the Boston Royal Honeymoon Agency. I'm so sorry to keep calling. There's a small issue with the marriage certificate you submitted."

Grasse, the perfume capital of France. I'd told Bryce once that I wanted to wait for the sunrise above the valley of roses. It was late when I said it, my hand in his, and I'd meant every word down to the marrow.

"What issue?"

"Our system can't match your marriage registration to any state record. The reference number on your copy doesn't follow a valid issuing format."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"It's likely just a clerical error on the document, ma'am. If you could verify the number with your husband and call us back, we'll get it sorted."

"I'll check. Thank you."

The reference number wasn't valid.

I hung up and pulled the certificate from the drawer, reading it line by line. The first time in three months I could see it with my own eyes. The paper was soft at the corners from handling, one fold gone furry where a thumb had worried it open and shut.

Near the bottom sat my signature, letters crowding and tipping sideways. I hadn't been able to see that day; I'd pressed a fingertip to the line and dragged the pen along it. Bryce had laughed and called it the most beautiful signature he'd ever seen.

Then I called my friend, the one who practiced law. Part of me was still building his defense: a scanning glitch, a typo, some tired clerk fat-fingering a digit. Part of me was waiting for her to laugh and tell me I was worrying over nothing.

"Rosalie? God, it's been forever. What's up?"

"I need you to run something for me." My voice came out flat, even. "Pull my marriage registration from the state vital records system. As soon as you can."

"Right now? Rosalie, is everything—"

"Please. Just tell me if the record's there."

A pause. "Give me ten minutes."

Ten minutes. I sat on the edge of the bed and didn't move.

The phone rang again.

"Rosalie." Her voice had gone careful, the way it did when she was choosing every word. "I've checked the state index and cross-referenced two neighboring ones. There's no registration filed under your name. And the copy you have—the seal and the reference format don't match anything a records office actually issues. I'd want it examined properly, but off the record? This wasn't filed. It was made to look like it was."

"You're saying it's fake."

"I'm saying that on paper, right now, there's no legal marriage to your name at all. Not to Bryce. Not to anyone."

Not filed. Made to look like it.

The phone shifted against my ear. That solid ground I'd been standing on had never been there.

I ran my thumb across the raised seal—the one I'd traced blind, back when I believed it made me someone's wife. It caught under the pad of my finger, cheap and shallow, nothing like the deep bite of a real embossment. I'd just never had eyes to tell the difference.

He hadn't only stopped loving me. He'd sat beside me in the dark, guided my hand to the line, and let me sign my own leash into a piece of paper he'd forged.

Three months of in my eyes you'll always be the most beautiful, while just past a door he kissed the woman he actually meant to marry.

And I'd carried a bag of lobster home, meaning to make him bisque.

I set the certificate face-down on the quilt, smoothing it flat with two fingers, the way you'd close a dead thing's eyes.

I'm not even a wife. I'm nothing.