Chapter 1: The Lemon Cake
“So did you two decide? Last week you were obsessed with the lemon.”
Tessa, the coordinator at Magnolia Hall, set a tiny plate in front of me with a fork balanced on the rim. Two bites of cake. One yellow, one pink. She was smiling the way people in the wedding business always smile, like every bride is her favorite.
I smiled back, because I thought I’d misheard.
“Last week?”
“Thursday! Oh, it was so cute.” She tapped the leather folder against her palm. “Jake fed you a bite and you made that little noise, and Chef said that’s the face he lives for. I told him I’d save you the lemon recipe card.”
I had worked a twelve-hour shift on Thursday. I’m a pediatric nurse at Levine Children’s Hospital. On Thursday I’d spent the afternoon holding a four-year-old’s hand while they put in her central line. I had not been at Magnolia Hall. I had never been at Magnolia Hall until twenty minutes ago, when I drove here alone because Jake said he couldn’t get out of a client lunch.
“Tessa,” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”
The smile stayed on her face, but it stopped meaning anything.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry, I must be thinking of…” She looked down at her folder. Morrow–Hart. November 14. Three hundred and twelve days I’d been counting down on my phone. She flipped a page. Her finger stopped.
“Is everything all right?” I asked, and I already knew it wasn’t.
Here’s what you need to understand about me and Jake. We met at twenty-four, at a friend’s Fourth of July party, when he burned his hand on a sparkler and I wrapped it in a napkin with ice. Nine years. Two apartments. One dog, Biscuit, who sleeps on his side of the bed. He proposed last Christmas on my parents’ back porch with my grandmother’s ring, which my grandmother handed him herself.
Three hundred and twelve days.
“We take a photo at every tasting,” Tessa said slowly. “For the couple’s file. So we remember the faces.” She turned the tablet around in her hands, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to. “I think you should see this. I’m so sorry.”
She held it out.
It was Jake. Of course it was Jake. Charcoal quarter-zip, the silver watch I bought him for his thirtieth. He was sitting at this table, in this chair, leaning toward a woman with long black hair and a bright red smile. He was holding a fork up to her mouth. On the fork was a bite of lemon cake.
She was laughing. He was looking at her the way he used to look at me.
The room got very quiet. Somewhere in the kitchen, a mixer was running.
“Do you know her?” Tessa asked softly.
I did. Kayla. She worked two desks down from him at Ashford Commercial. She’d come to our Christmas party last year. She’d complimented my ring.
“She signed the guest book,” Tessa said, and then looked like she wished she hadn’t.
“Show me.”
The tasting log had a line for the couple. In Jake’s handwriting, the handwriting on every birthday card I’d gotten for nine years, it said: Jake Morrow & Kayla.
Not a last name. Just Kayla. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
My hands were shaking, so I put them flat on the tablecloth. Tessa was saying something about privacy and how she never should have, and I heard myself say, “It’s okay. You did the right thing.” Nurse voice. Calm for the scared ones.
I picked up my phone and called him.
He answered on the second ring. In the background, I could hear voices and glasses.
“Hey, babe,” Jake said. Warm. Easy. “Sorry, I’m slammed. Still at the office. How’s the tasting? Did you pick the lemon?”
I looked at the picture on the tablet. At the fork. At her mouth.
“Jake,” I said. “Who’s with you right now?”
There was a pause. Just a small one. Just long enough.
