“Eden,” Rhys says again, this time gently. And he takes the phone out of my hand and turns it so he can see what I was looking at. He makes a sound—a grunt of dismay.
I try to grab the phone back from him, but he holds it out of my reach.
“What difference does it make now?” he asks.
“I need to know.”
“You should turn it off. Put it away.”
“I need to know,” I repeat. “Give me the fucking phone.”
His eyes widen. He lets me have the phone.
I scroll back in Grace’s feed. Days. Weeks. Months. It’s a cascade of photos of her and her ex-fiancé, Henry. We sail back in time through a parade of beaming good times—posing at the Falls of the Big Sioux, paddleboarding, a Fourth of July barbecue with friends, rafting, kite-flying, a Memorial Day picnic with her family, an Easter egg hunt with his family, her making a birthday wish with eyes squeezed tightly shut as Henry looks on adoringly, and then, there it is, six months back: a candlelit dinner for two, Henry’s hands extended with the ring box open.
Henry proposed to Grace ten days before Paul proposed to me.
Paul proposed to mebecauseHenry proposed to Grace.
Because Grace said yes.
Because Grace was going to marry someone else, someone who wasn’t Paul.
“Paulrevenge proposedto me,” I say to the quiet room.
“It might be coinci—” Rhys tries, but I cut him off.
“I knew he wasn’t over her. I fuckingknew,and he told me a million times he was, and I still knew, and I believed him anyway.”
Rhys swivels toward me. The movement’s abrupt, but his expression isn’t angry. It’s something else, something I could almost mistake for sympathy if I didn’t know better. “Hey. Hey. If you knew how many women could say those exact words…it doesn’t make you foolish or stupid or any of the things you’re beating yourself up with?—”
I cut him off, afraid that if he keeps being that nice to me, I’ll cry. “You were right,” I say. “You were totally fucking right.”
“About what?” he says, and I can tell: He doesn’t want to be right this time. Well, too bad.
“Relationships are a joke. Marriage is a disaster. And love is a fantasy.”
He looks like he wants to say something, like he wants to argue with me.
Instead he says, voice steely, “We need to get those quilts.”
15
Rhys
Icouldn’t keep Teller Austin from destroying Eden’s life two years ago.
I couldn’t keep Paul from being a pile of dog turd in the park. And I can’t unsee how much it hurt her to discover the truth.
But I can definitely help her get those quilts back.
We just need a car.
Joe drops us at the rental place company in nearby Galilee, which—I learn—is a well-known central Washington tourist town.
The rental car desk is staffed by a solitary gray-haired woman wearing a Wonder Woman sweatshirt and a weary expression. When Eden and I step through the door, she says, “Please tell me you’re not here because you want to rent a car.”
“Bad news,” I tell her.
