Chapter One
The next autumn
The lace was the finest work she had ever done.
Anna held it up to the light streaming from the window, turning it slowly, examining each small loop and crossing with the critical eye of a woman who had spent the better part of her life with a needle in her hand.
The pattern was her own design, a trailing vine of small flowers, delicate as a breath, worked in ivory thread with a gleam of silk.
It ran along the neckline of the dress and fell in a deep border along the hem, and it had taken her the better part of three weeks to complete.
She set it down against the white cotton of the bodice and sat back in her chair.
It was finished. Her dress. Her wedding dress.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips, a smile breaking across her face before she could stop it.
The dress lay spread across her worktable in the morning light, spilling over the edges in soft folds.
It was—she could acknowledge to herself, here, in her workroom with no one to accuse her of vanity—beautiful.
Better than she had imagined it when she first set pencil to paper and began to sketch.
Better than anything she had made before.
And it was her wedding dress.
The words still sent a little rush through her.
Even now, weeks after Ethan had knelt in the parlor of her mother’s house with a ring in his hand and that slow, certain smile of his that had always made her feel as though she were standing in a patch of sunlight.
His dark hair was pomaded and neatly combed.
He wore his best silk waistcoat and a liberal splash of cologne.
Anna, he had said, I cannot imagine my life without you in it.
She had said yes before he had finished asking.
She ran one finger along the lace border, careful not to snag the thread.
Her engagement ring caught the light as she did so.
It was a modest thing by Ethan’s standards, he had said apologetically, but she had loved it precisely because it wasn’t extravagant.
A small oval pearl set in gold, quietly lovely.
She had not taken it off once since the evening he slid it onto her finger.
Whenever she looked at it, she imagined the life that awaited her—the home, the family, the husband who was a respected man about town.
That little ring seemed to conjure all her dreams.
Outside, the town was going about its morning business.
She could hear the distant rhythm of wheels on the road, a dog barking somewhere down the street, and the faint clang of the blacksmith’s hammer carrying through the air.
Her mother was moving in the kitchen below, the familiar sounds of her domestic chores drifting up through the floorboards.
The smell of coffee and woodsmoke and baking bread.
Anna looked at the dress one more time.
She wanted to show him. She wanted to show Ethan.
It was an impulsive thought, and she recognized it as such, but impulsive had never particularly frightened her.
Ethan had said he would be at his office all morning.
He had a meeting with one of his business associates, something to do with a property transaction she hadn’t fully followed.
But surely, he would take five minutes. Surely, he would want to know that the dress was done, that everything was moving forward, that their wedding was becoming real and tangible.
Something beautiful that could be held up to the light and admired.
As she looked at it, she allowed herself to dream about the day when she would walk down the aisle towards her adoring fiancé, just as she had watched Jane do a few months before. Her heart skipped a beat.
She folded the dress carefully, wrapped it in the length of cloth she kept for protecting finished work, and tucked it under her arm.
Then she went to find her coat and her bonnet, called up to her mother that she’d be back before noon, and stepped out into the crisp autumn morning.
***
Ethan’s office occupied the first floor of a handsome brick building on the main street.
It was the sort of place that announced its occupant’s prosperity without needing to say so directly.
The brass plate beside the door read E. Campbell its door was set apart from the others by the small gold nameplate affixed to the wood.
The corridor was quiet. Apparently, no one else was there. Her footsteps were quiet on the floorboards. She would, she thought, give him such a surprise. He’d never expect her to pay a visit.
The door to Ethan’s office stood slightly ajar. Through a gap of several inches, she could see the warm light of the interior and hear the low murmur of voices.
He wasn’t alone after all.
She lifted her hand to knock. And then she stopped.
The murmur was not the voice of a business associate.
It was a woman’s voice, low and warm, intimate in a way that turned Anna’s stomach to water even before she fully understood why. She stood with her hand raised and her feet rooted to the floorboards, and through the gap in the door she could see…
She could see Ethan.
And a woman.
And his hands were on the woman’s face, tilting it upward.
And the unmistakable, unambiguous press of his mouth against hers.
Her stomach plunged as though she were falling from a height. Her skin went cold and then flushed hot. She thought she might faint.
The wrapped dress slipped from Anna’s arm.
She caught it before it hit the floor and stood very still in the corridor for a moment that seemed to stretch to an impossible length.
It was the kind of moment that rearranges the furniture of a life while you stand helplessly by.
All she could do was watch as all her hopes dissolved to nothing before her eyes.
Then she turned and walked back down the corridor through the street door, and out into the street, which continued to bustle in the autumn sunshine as though nothing had happened.
A dog barked. A carriage rolled past, and its driver tipped his hat.
Everything was the same, and yet everything was different.
***
She could not have said, afterward, how she got home.
She remembered the cold air on her face. The way her own heartbeat sounded loud and strange in her ears. A woman she vaguely recognized saying, “Good morning, Miss Foster,” from across the street, and her own mouth forming the appropriate response.
She remembered the front door of her mother’s house. The familiar give of the latch. The smell of the kitchen.
And then her mother’s kindly face, rosy and plump, turned from the stove, just beginning to say something ordinary, something about dinner or errands or the letter she’d been meaning to write—and stopping, because her mother had always been able to read her. No explanation was needed.
“Anna,” her mother said, and opened her arms.
Anna crossed the kitchen and fell into them. The composure she had maintained all the way home failed her completely.
She wept great shuddering sobs into her mother’s shoulder while her mother held her close and said nothing at all.
Which was exactly right because there was nothing to say.
Her mother stroked her hair and rocked her slightly, the way she had when Anna was small, and the world had seemed very large and very frightening, as it did again now.
Anna cried until she could cry no more, and the kitchen was quiet again except for the soft sound of her own unsteady breathing.
“Tell me,” her mother said at last, gently.
So Anna told her. In fragments, not all in the right order. The office. The door. The woman. The wedding dress. The lace. The way his hands had looked, so familiar, pressed against another woman’s face.
Her mother listened without interrupting. Even through her wretchedness, Anna noticed her mother’s expression was very still, very sad, and not entirely surprised. Was Anna the only one who had never seen Ethan for what he was, she wondered.