Chapter 4

I was still staring at the white tulips in Ava’s photograph when Margaret Hayes walked into my flower shop.

Caleb’s mother stopped beside the counter, following my gaze from the old charity committee picture to my open wedding album.

For one second, she said nothing.

That was enough.

“Why did Caleb choose white tulips for our wedding?” I asked.

Margaret set her purse down carefully. “He’s always liked them.”

“Since Ava?”

Her expression tightened.

In the photograph, seventeen-year-old Caleb stood beside Ava beneath the high school scoreboard. Ava held a bouquet of white tulips against her blue dress.

On the next page of my album, I held the same flowers against my wedding gown.

“Nora,” Margaret said gently, “people carry preferences from one part of their lives into another. It doesn’t mean your wedding belonged to Ava.”

I looked down at the photographs.

Three years ago, Caleb had told me daisies were too informal. White tulips were elegant, he’d said. Timeless.

I had thought he was helping me make a decision.

Now I wondered whether the decision had already been made.

I turned another page.

There we were at Marshall Point Lighthouse, the wind lifting my hair as Caleb knelt in front of me. I remembered how certain he had seemed. How perfect the place had felt.

Margaret inhaled sharply.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Please stop saying that.”

She looked toward the shop window. “Caleb had planned to propose there when he was eighteen.”

The room seemed to lose its air.

“To Ava?”

“She left for New York before he could.”

My thumb pressed against the photograph until the paper bent.

Caleb had told me he chose the lighthouse because the view reminded him of permanence.

He had never told me he had chosen it years before he knew my name.

I touched the oval diamond on my finger.

Margaret watched the movement.

The pity in her face frightened me more than her silence.

“The ring too?” I asked.

“He never bought Ava a ring.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Margaret closed her eyes briefly. “He drew the design after graduation. He kept the sketch.”

“And used it for mine.”

“He had it made for you, Nora. He put it on your hand.”

“Did he change anything?”

She didn’t answer.

I closed the album.

By the time Caleb came home that evening, rain was striking the windows hard enough to shake the glass.

It was our fifth anniversary.

He carried a tool bag instead of flowers.

“You’re going back to Ava’s house,” I said.

“The temporary window seals aren’t holding. The crew hasn’t arrived yet.”

“You already called a crew.”

“And booked her a hotel. She refuses to leave until someone checks the house.”

“So let her refuse.”

Caleb set down the bag. “Her father just died. She’s alone in that place, and the power may go out.”

I searched his face for the man who had once told me he was too practical to cut a larger window into my shop.

For Ava, practicality had become devotion.

“If I ask you to stay,” I said, “will you?”

His hand remained on the strap of the tool bag.

“I promised I’d make sure she was safe.”

“What about the promises you made to me?”

“We can celebrate next weekend.”

He said it as if our anniversary were a dinner reservation that could be moved.

I went upstairs.

In the bedroom, I removed my wedding band first. Then the oval diamond he had designed for another proposal.

Two pale lines circled my finger.

I placed both rings in an envelope with the lighthouse photograph. On the back, I wrote:

You should have given these to the woman you chose them for.

Downstairs, Caleb was pulling on his waterproof jacket.

I held out the envelope.

“Give this to Ava when you see her.”

He opened it.

The rings dropped into his palm.

“Nora—”

His phone vibrated.

Ava’s name lit the screen.

“If you answer her now,” I said, “don’t come home expecting your wife to still be here.”

The phone kept ringing between us.

Caleb looked at my rings.

Then he lifted his eyes to mine.