Chapter 3

It wasn't long before Earl came back, Clementine with him.

She trailed in behind him, soaked through.

Earl wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Faith, the rain's coming down too hard, and it's late now. Let her stay the night."

"Don't worry. I'll send her off first thing tomorrow."

I said nothing. I just nodded and walked into the bedroom.

Maybe it was because I hadn't slept the night before, and had spent the whole day standing out on the balcony.

My mind was a mess, but even so I dropped fast into sleep.

I woke with a jolt in the middle of the night, and only then noticed the sheets beside me had gone cold.

Earl wasn't there.

I threw off the covers and got up. I'd only just reached the door of the guest room when, through the gap, I saw the two of them holding each other inside.

Earl had Clementine wrapped tight in his arms.

That grip, as if he wanted to press her all the way into his own bones.

Clementine didn't struggle at all. She only wept, letting herself sink into the embrace.

Earl's voice came, low and strained.

"Clementine, this is what you owed me eight years ago."

I forced down the trembling in my body and pushed the door open.

At the sound, the two of them broke apart with startling speed.

The instant our eyes met, something like panic flickered in Earl's.

"Faith, let me explain."

Clementine tried to speak up too.

"Miss Summers, it isn't Earl's fault, I can—"

I cut her off.

"Miss Butler, this is between Earl and me."

"I don't need you explaining anything on his behalf."

Back in the master bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed. Earl came and crouched down in front of me, and began to explain his history with Clementine.

He and Clementine had been childhood sweethearts, and after they came of age they'd simply fallen together, the natural next step.

The way Earl told it, back then Clementine had been everything to him.

Senior year, close to graduation, the Fox family went bankrupt. His father couldn't take the blow and threw himself off a high building, and creditors came pounding at the door.

At the lowest, most agonizing point of Earl's life, Clementine left without so much as a word to him, going abroad exactly as her family arranged.

That leaving lasted eight years.

Until yesterday's college reunion, when Clementine, gone for eight years, suddenly reappeared.

And by then Earl had already become one of Riverton's new elite, with my help and my family's.

At the end of it, Earl gripped fistfuls of his own hair, helpless.

"Faith, believe me, I really don't have feelings for her anymore."

"I don't want to be tangled up with her either, but I want to give some kind of closure to the person I was eight years ago."

The more he said, the more it hurt him. By the end his voice had gone thick, and tears fell in big drops onto the floor.

"Faith, thank god I have you."

"If it weren't for you, I'd never have made it through these years."

I said nothing. I offered no comfort.

Earl's quiet sobbing filled the master bedroom, and my heart sank, bit by bit, with the sound of it.

The one sitting in front of him was me.

But his tears were for another woman.

Only when Earl's emotions had settled a little did he seem to realize I hadn't said a single word.

He grabbed my hand, almost frantic.

"Faith, what I said this morning was true. I really do want to marry you."

"Faith, marry me. Please?"

A day ago, hearing this, I would surely have wept for joy.

But now, I couldn't find a trace of love in Earl's eyes.

The way he looked at me was more like a drowning man staring at a straw.

I pulled my hand back. My voice was so calm it frightened even me.

"Earl, this proposal, do you actually want to marry me?"

"Or are you just trying to prove a point to Clementine?"