The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

“You aren’t getting cold feet, are you?” Lara tilted her head, only slightly joking.

He didn’t touch her, and for some reason it felt sobering and honest that he didn’t. He wasn’t trying to charm her. “I’m sorry that I had to grow up—that you didn’t meet me now instead of then.”

Lara laughed this comment off, but he didn’t. She realized as she looked around the room—the photos, the thoughtful gift suspended above her—that the change that had come over him in the last few years had been so gradual, it had escaped her notice. He leaned his tall frame against the workbench and faced her, folding his arms. “I was someone who had to grow into love. Not that I had to grow to love you. I always loved you, but I didn’t know how to love you, so what you got was the equivalent of an attempt at a work of art from someone who didn’t know how to draw. I said the words, but we both know often they were hollow. At times it was the very absence of you that shaped me. But that’s what it is, isn’t it? Both the presence and the absence of a person. The sum of it all. As a result, I feel it more deeply now. Love. My love for you.”

The silence between them was thick. She could tell he didn’t expect a response from her. There was so much shared history—both good and bad. Yet it was the things that were unsaid that charged the room. Lara met his eyes. She saw this wedding gift for what it was—an offering—more a piece of himself than even marrying her could ever be. Every inch of that truck had been shaped and sanded by his hands—it was created by him for her.

He took her hand. Her lips met his. Todd was a great kisser—slow, deliberate. She knew exactly where to press against him to fill the spaces between them. He put his hands on her face and the kisses became deeper, harder. As they pulled apart, he caught a strand of her hair, twirling it around his finger and studying it.

“It’s nearly midnight.” She didn’t want to go.

“Ah, shit, not midnight,” he teased. He turned back to the perfectly sanded truck in front of them. “Here is the color she’ll be when she’s all done.” Taking her hand, he led her around and showed her a sample—the original Le Cirque Margot deep-red color that resembled a ripe Red Delicious apple.

She could easily imagine a lifetime of this. Smiling, she wished they could just go back to their apartment and their bed tonight. When they got back from their honeymoon in Greece, there was even a house, a stately Victorian with a turret and a wraparound porch, that they were looking at buying. “I really do have to go.”

Lara looked back at the truck before he turned out the light. “Will I see you tomorrow?” It was a joke, and she said it lightly as she opened the door and walked out onto the sidewalk.

“Nothing could keep me away.”

Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

October 9, 2004 (Fifteen Hours Later)

The church bells began to clang as the forecasted thunderstorm let out its initial boom, sending a torrent of rain over the valley. For weeks, the weather had called for clear and sunny skies today, but in the last hour, an inflamed purple sky had fixed itself unnaturally over the town of Kerrigan Falls.

Was this bad luck? An omen, perhaps? That was crazy. Lara wiped the thought from her mind. From her vantage point in an upstairs classroom, she watched a classic white convertible Mercedes idling just beyond the steps. Rain was soaking the lavender tissue-paper streamers taped to the car’s trunk, sending a stream of cheap ink down over the bumper and into the mud puddle below. She bit at a stray hangnail on an otherwise perfect manicure and watched as guests teetered across the gravel, then hopscotched over newly formed puddles and up the stairs in their good Sunday shoes, scrambling to get out of the downpour.

The dress—the enchanted version—complete with pearl choker, looked perfect. Her long, wild blond hair was now secured in an elaborate low twist. She’d taken off her new shoes, cursing herself for not breaking them in; then she decided to enchant them as well, the leather giving way under command.

It was nearly four thirty. Her wedding was about to start, yet no one had come to get her. Odd. She looked around the room. Where had everyone gone? She strained her neck to see. Her mother? Her bridesmaids, Caren and Betsy?

At the Chamberlain Winery five miles away in the heart of the Piedmont wine country, there was another group of workers preparing the reception. Long tables adorned with damask linens, mercury-glass votives, and elaborate hydrangea centerpieces awaited the 150 guests now seated in the pews and flipping through hymnals below her. Within hours, those guests would dance to a full Irish band overlooking the vineyard while dining on stations of cheeses from around the world—Manchegos, smoked Goudas, and bleus—then moving to short ribs, shrimp with garlic sauce, and finally a plated combination of a filet mignon with an herb-crusted salmon and patatas bravas. Around eight, they’d cut the wedding cake—a whimsical aqua-and-gold confection consisting of three layers of white almond cake topped with a cream cheese and buttercream frosting evoking just a hint of almond extract. Their friends and family would drink the wines that thrived during the humid Virginia summers—the peppery Cabernet Francs, tannic Nebbiolos, and creamy Viogniers all poured into heavy crystal Sasaki goblets with orbed stems.

Lara had designed every detail. In her mind, she was already worrying about the reception details, needing to get started, get moving. Minutes ago, the activity that had swarmed around her had all but disappeared and an eerie quiet had set in, the rattling boom from the