Chapter 8

The main house was hosting a farewell dinner they called "The Last Night." In the Winter House, I closed my suitcase.

The dining table was crowded with Vivian's favorite dishes. There was a time when the three men would argue for a solid week over the menu for my birthday dinner. Tonight there was even a hazelnut dessert on the table, and though they all knew about my allergy, nobody noticed I wasn't at dinner at all.

I sat in the half-empty dressing room and took one last look around the estate where I had lived for twenty-six years. There was a water stain in the corner of the window where the Winter House roof had leaked, and the old photographs Julian had nailed up himself were still on the wall. In one of them the four of us sat side by side on the observatory steps, back when all of us believed things would go on that way forever.

On the corner of the desk lay the gauze I'd used to bandage my own hand.

One crown, and perhaps I could have forgiven it. One chair taken away, and perhaps I would still have waited for them to put it back. But the damage was never one thing. The gift, my own seat, the promises, the gown, my accounts, my driver, my bedroom, and in the end even the right to call for help. Every time, they told me it was temporary and asked me to be a little more understanding.

I wrote out messages and sent them separately to my mother, to Alexander, to Nathan, and to Julian.

To my mother: I am not handing everything over to my sister. I simply don't want any of it anymore. To Alexander: You used to protect me first. Now you decide what I've done wrong first. To Nathan: I called for help, and you heard me perfectly clearly. To Julian: You can put the nameplate back on the chair, but I won't be sitting in it.

George stood in the doorway, his eyes red. "Should I tell your mother, so she can see you off?"

Glasses were clinking in the main house. Through the half-open window I heard Alexander promise he would do whatever it took to keep Vivian out of Black Harbor, and Nathan say he would see her through every part of her trauma, and Julian say that once the wedding was over he would make up everything I had lost twice over.

"There's no need." I pulled up the handle of my suitcase. "I already gave them their chance to say goodbye."

No black card, no private driver. With what I had earned on the restoration project I bought a ticket on the overnight coastal train, and carried my luggage aboard myself.

As the train pulled out of Boston, I didn't feel the relief I had expected. That city held twenty-six years' worth of love. I knew all of that warmth had been real, and precisely because it was real, having it taken back piece by piece cut so deeply.

My phone stayed quiet. Back at the estate, nobody had noticed yet that I was gone.

Snow was blowing across the platform at Black Harbor. At one in the morning it was nearly empty, and I picked Roman out at a glance. There was no motorcade and no grand welcome. He simply stood at the exit with a heavy coat over his arm.

He didn't rush to ask why I had come early, and he didn't reach for my suitcase. "Cold?"

"Very."

He handed me the coat, waited until I had it on, and then asked, "Do you still want to go through with this?"

I answered honestly. "I'm afraid of the cold, and I'm afraid of choosing the wrong marriage."

Roman put a set of car keys into my hand. "You're the only person with access to that car. At any time, you can drive to the station and leave."

The keys were warm from his hand, and they sat heavy in my palm.

At the Ashford estate, they told me over and over that I would never leave, and it made me want nothing but to escape. Roman had put the choice to leave in my hands, and for the first time I was curious about what lay behind the gates of the Black Harbor estate.

I saw their group chat later. At that same hour, dinner at the main house was still going. Vivian had calmed under the weight of everyone's promises, and the three men had already started planning how to win me over after the wedding the following night.

"Restore the black card and the red button, and commission a more expensive crown," Alexander wrote. "She hates the cold. There's no chance she'd actually run off to Black Harbor," Julian wrote, sure of himself. "One night of sulking and she'll be fine."

Nathan glanced at his silent phone. "Vivian's safety comes first. Evelyn's feelings can wait until tomorrow."

Roman pushed open the heavy doors of the Black Harbor estate, and a snow-laden sea wind hit us. I stepped onto the land they were certain I would never dare approach, and I didn't look back.