Chapter One
Madera Canyon, Arizona
The flowers in Hazel’s bouquet were perfect.
She could hardly stop looking at them. Her father had pressed the soft ivory roses into her hands that morning with trembling pride—goodness only knew how he’d gotten them.
Delicate sprigs of lavender were tucked between the stems because Thomas always said he loved the smell of it on her skin.
She had picked those herself from the garden with unsteady fingers.
In the summer light streaming in through the church windows, every petal glowed.
Everything was exactly as it should be. Better than right; she was marrying her best friend.
He is going to love this, she thought, smoothing the front of her dress for the hundredth time as she began her walk down the aisle toward the altar.
The fabric was the palest blush, borrowed from her cousin in Tucson and altered at the waist to nip in just so.
It was very becoming, even if she did say so herself.
Her mother’s pearls were cool against her neck. Her red hair had been pinned and curled and fussed over since before sunrise. She felt beautiful in a way she never usually allowed herself to feel. It was as though her happiness was lighting her from within.
It wasn’t vanity or pride, just a fact. This was her day to be loved.
She wanted him to see her like this. She wanted to watch his face when he saw her.
Except now, as she looked up at the altar, she couldn’t see him. She looked and looked again. Perhaps, in her nervous state, she had simply missed him. She scanned the front pews, then looked again at her father and the minister. And she saw it written on their faces.
Thomas was not there.
Her heart fluttered, and she felt her face pale, but she told herself it didn’t mean anything.
There were a hundred reasons a man might be late to his own wedding.
His horse could have thrown a shoe. The road from his family’s place was uneven—quite treacherous in places—and after the dry spell they’d had this summer, the ruts were deep enough to catch a wheel.
Perhaps he had simply overslept. Thomas had always been a sound sleeper, something she had teased him about since they were children, since the long, lazy summers when they had grown up side by side.
She had known the sound of his laugh better than her own heartbeat.
And liked it better than birdsong or church bells.
He’ll come, she told herself. He always comes.
That was the thing about Thomas McBride.
He had always come. He had come when she was seven years old and had fallen from the old oak at the edge of his father’s property, sitting beside her in the dirt and making her laugh through her tears until her father arrived.
He had come to every harvest, every church social, every quiet evening on the porch where they had talked about nothing and everything until the stars came out.
He had come to her mother’s funeral three months ago, standing by her side with his hand over hers.
He had always, always been there for her.
She adjusted her bouquet and fixed her eyes on the open doors at the back of the church.
***
The whispers started slowly.
She noticed it like a change in the weather—the air shifted, the way it did before rain.
Hazel kept her eyes on the door.
Her father appeared at her elbow, his broad hand settling warm and steady at her back.
James Fitzgerald was not a man who showed his worry easily or without cause.
He had weathered drought and debt and the loss of his wife with the same quiet steadiness that had always made Hazel feel safe.
But she could feel the tension in him now.
“Hazel, love.” His voice was low.
“He’s coming,” she said.
“It’s been half an hour.”
“He’s coming.” She said it more firmly this time, as if saying the words with conviction would make them true. He’s coming. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t leave me here. Not like this.
Her father didn’t answer. That was worse, somehow, than anything he could have said.
***
When a full hour had rolled by, Mrs. Lowe from two farms over came to stand beside her with a cup of water and a kindly expression that made Hazel’s stomach turn.
It was pity. Gentle, careful, and unbearable.
It was the kind of look people wore at funerals, not weddings.
And Hazel recoiled from it as though she’d been struck.
“Sweetheart,” the woman began.
“Don’t.” Hazel’s voice came out sharper than she had meant it to. “Please don’t.”
“We ought to—”
“He’s just late.” Hazel heard herself say the words and hated how fragile her voice sounded, how thin. How unconvincing. “People are late. There is nothing wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong, and if everyone would just—”
Her voice cracked. She pressed her lips together hard and lifted her chin. “If everyone would just wait.”
The bouquet trembled in her hands.
She gripped it tighter, and the smell of crushed lavender rose between her fingers.
***
It was her father who finally told her.
She didn’t know how much time had passed by then.
More than an hour. Perhaps a lot more. She had lost all sense of time, standing there at that altar with her ivory roses and her mother’s pearls and the morning light shifting from gold to white as the sun climbed higher.
The guests had grown very quiet. Many had left, slipping out in ones and twos with their eyes down, unable to bear witness to the waiting.
Reverend Cole had retreated to his vestry.
The flowers on the altar had begun to droop as the day grew later and hotter.
Her father stood in front of her.
He took her hands in his, both of them, her small, cold fingers wrapped inside his rough, warm ones. And he looked at her with those steady brown eyes that had always, in her twenty-three years, told her the truth even when the truth was hard.
“He isn’t coming, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “He isn’t coming.”
The world tilted. For months—no, years—this had been everything she had dreamed of. Even now, she could still see it in her mind’s eye—a home to tend, children to nurture. And Thomas.
“That’s not right,” she heard herself say. “It can’t be. He wouldn’t.”
“Hazel—”
“No.” She pulled her hands back. She stepped away from him and turned toward the door because if she looked at it, she could still see him coming. She could still hold the image of him walking through it, rumpled and breathless and full of apology.
“No, you’re wrong. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do this. You don’t know Thomas. He wouldn’t—”
There was a trembling edge to her voice now, and she gulped down air between words.
“I know, love.” Her father’s voice broke on the last word, a fracture so small that only someone who really knew him would hear it. Would know what it meant. As, deep down, Hazel did.
“He wouldn’t leave me,” she said, her voice rising again. Now, she could hear it, but she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold back the tide of panic any longer. “He is my best friend, do you understand? He is my best friend, and he loves me. He has always loved me. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Hazel.” Her father moved to take her shoulders, and she turned into him the way she had as a child, her face pressed hard against his chest, the bouquet crushed between them and the scent suddenly unbearable, unbearable, because she had chosen them because Thomas loved lavender and Thomas was not here.
The sobs came then. Great, wrenching, helpless sobs that she had no strength left to hold back. They shook her whole body. She was aware of her father’s arms around her, of his hand moving in slow circles across her back, of the church around them finally, mercifully empty.
“He’s coming,” she kept saying, muffled against his shirt. “He’s coming. He’s coming.”
Her father held her and said nothing.
She knew it wasn’t true; she didn’t need to be told.
***
She did not remember the journey home.
She was aware of her father helping her into the wagon, of the familiar creak of the seat and the warmth of the afternoon sun on her bent head.
She was aware of the road, and the sound of the horse’s hooves, and the way Madera Canyon looked exactly the same as it always did.
The dry golden hills, the saguaros standing tall and indifferent, the sky a hard bright blue above it all.
The world had not changed, not even a little bit.
This is all wrong, she thought to herself.
The sun shouldn’t be shining. The world shouldn’t be turning. And yet somehow it was.
She still had the bouquet in her lap. It looked rather the worse for wear now, wilting and mangled from an hour or more held in anxious hands.
At home, her father guided her gently inside.
He settled her into the armchair by the window, the one that had always been her mother’s favorite, Clara’s sewing chair, with the best light.
He brought water. He brought a blanket, even though the day was already warm, folding it carefully across her knees.
He crouched down in front of her and looked at her with an expression she had never seen on him before, helpless and aching.
“I’ll make something to eat,” he said softly.
She nodded because it seemed like the only thing to do, though she couldn’t imagine ever being hungry again.
He went to the kitchen, and she turned her face to the window, looking out at the yard, at the gate at the end of the winding path.
If she kept watching the gate, she thought, perhaps she might see him coming.
In her imagination, he came running, out of breath.
I’m so sorry, he said. I fell from my horse.
He would have his hat in his hands, full of explanation and remorse and love, and this—all of this—would become a story they told in years to come.
Do you remember the day I was late to our wedding?
he would say, and she would shake her head, pretending she had never been afraid. Had never doubted him for a moment.
The gate stayed closed. The track beyond it was empty and quiet.
The bouquet lay still in her lap.
The ivory roses, which had been so perfect that morning, had lost many of their petals, and the ones that remained were ragged.
Hazel sat very straight in her mother’s armchair and stared at the gate and told herself that Thomas McBride was coming.
She would wait.
She had always waited for him.
She did not know how to stop. Not yet.