Chapter 12: Rose Gold

“Put that down, child, before it burns your fingers,” a voice said behind me.

I jumped so hard that the clipping fluttered, and Nana Rose stood in the hallway leaning on her cane, as small as a child and twice as sharp.

“Nana Rose, I did not mean to snoop, it was on the table, and my father’s face was on it,” I said.

“Of course you looked, I would have looked, anyone with a pulse would have looked,” Nana Rose said, and she took the paper gently out of my hand.

“What does it mean, what did he do?” I asked.

Nana Rose unfolded it, and her eyes did not move, as if she had read it so many times that she no longer needed to. “Twenty years ago my son Richard ran a company called Voss and Sons, steel and shipping, and he was a good builder and a very bad businessman, and your father’s company bought the debt that sank him.”

“My father bought his debt,” I said slowly.

“Quietly, through three banks, so nobody knew whose name was on the paper, Richard lost everything in one winter, and then he went to bed one night, and in the morning there was only a bag missing from the closet,” Nana Rose said.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered.

“Do not apologize for a man’s choices, child, your father ruined a company, but he did not make my son walk out on his wife and his boy, Richard did that with his own two legs,” Nana Rose said.

“Does Kade know?” I asked.

“He knows his father left, he does not know why, Odile has kept that clipping for two decades like a prayer book, she reads it when she is angry, and she has been angry for a very long time,” Nana Rose said.

“She left it out on purpose, she wants me to tell him, or she wants him to find it, either way it breaks us,” I said, and the truth landed like cold water.

Nana Rose looked at me with new respect. “You are quick, I told you that you had a spine.”

“What do I do, I cannot lie to him, he has already had so many people lie to him,” I said.

“Listen to me, a boy who has waited twenty years at a window for his father to walk up the road should not learn the truth at a dinner table, from a clipping, with his mother smiling at him over the wine,” Nana Rose said.

“So I should say nothing,” I said.

“You should wait, there is a difference, wait until you know all of it, and wait until he is strong enough to hear it, and when the time comes, you tell him yourself, with your own mouth, and you hold his hand,” Nana Rose said.

“That is a very hard thing to carry,” I said.

“Child, I am seventy eight years old, I have carried a stove, three husbands, and one daughter in law, hard is my whole personality,” Nana Rose said.

I laughed, and the laugh broke in the middle, and a tear slid down my cheek.

“There she is, come here,” Nana Rose said, and she pulled my head down and kissed my forehead, and she smelled like peppermint and old perfume.

“Why are you being kind to me, I am a Hale,” I said.

“You are my great grandchild’s mother first, and a Hale second, and my grandson’s face when he looks at you tells me what I need to know,” Nana Rose said.

“What face?” I asked.

“The one he wore when he was six and I gave him his first pocket watch, a face like a boy who has just been handed the whole sky and is afraid to drop it,” Nana Rose said.

My eyes burned again, and I whispered, “He says it is only a contract.”

“Kade says many things, he also said he would never wear a tie, put the paper in your pocket, and do not let that woman see your face when you do it,” Nana Rose said.

I folded the clipping into a small square and tucked it into my bag, and Nana Rose nodded, and then she slid a ring off her own finger, a thin rose gold band with a tiny stone.

“Nana Rose, I cannot take that,” I said.

“It was mine, my second husband gave it to me in a rainstorm, and he was the only one of the three I really loved, take it, you cannot marry with an empty hand, a Voss bride wears a ring,” Nana Rose said.

She pushed it onto my finger, and it fit as if it had always been mine.

“Nana, are you stealing my fiancée?” Kade asked from the end of the hall, with his jacket over his arm.

“I am improving her, go away, we are talking about women’s things,” Nana Rose said.

“Women’s things like what, my tragic childhood?” Kade asked.

“Among other topics,” Nana Rose said, and she patted my hand, and she walked away with her cane tapping like a tiny drum.

Kade stopped in front of me, and his eyes dropped to the ring. “That is Nana’s.”

“She gave it to me, I did not ask,” I said.

“She has not taken that ring off since my grandfather died, not even to wash her hands,” Kade said, and his voice went rough.

“I will give it back after the year,” I said.

“I do not think she will let you,” Kade said, and he took my hand and looked at the ring, and for a moment he looked at it like a man looking at a window.

“I am sorry about my mother, she was cruel, I should have warned you, I should have said no to this dinner,” Kade said.

“You warned me, I came anyway, and I told her what I bring, did you hear me, I did not even stutter,” I said.

“I heard, I have never been prouder of anyone, and I do not even know how to say it,” Kade said, and his thumb moved over the ring.

“Say it badly, I will not mind,” I said.

“I am proud of you, Mina, that was terrible and I did it wrong,” Kade said, and I laughed and cried at the same time.

“That was perfect,” I said.

In the car, the city went by in long gold lines, and I held the little square of paper in my bag with one hand and Kade’s hand with the other, and I felt like a thief carrying a bomb.

“You are quiet,” Kade said.

“I am tired, it is the baby, Zola says it takes everything, and I am hungry again, I know I just ate,” I said, and I hated how easily the lie came.

“Then I will stop at a bakery, rule one is I feed you,” Kade said.

“Rule one was separate bedrooms,” I said.

“I added a clause, the east wing now comes with a fridge that refuses to be empty,” Kade said.

He had the driver stop, and he went into a little shop with a yellow light, and I sat alone in the back seat and took out the clipping and looked at my father’s face.

“What did you do to them, Father?” I whispered.

My phone buzzed in my bag, and the number on the screen was one I knew by now, the unknown number with no name.

Did she show you the clipping? Ask your father what he did to the Voss family. Then ask yourself why Kade Voss is marrying you.

The car door opened, and Kade climbed in with a paper bag and a warm smile, and I put the phone face down on my knee and smiled back.

“Cinnamon rolls, I got six, I did not know your number,” he said.

“Six is perfect,” I said, and under my other hand the ring felt suddenly heavy, and I could not stop thinking about one question, whether the man who held my hand so carefully was marrying a woman he cared for, or the daughter of the man who destroyed his father.