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She glanced at him, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He frowned as she continued down the tunnel. This one had been hollowed out to fit a small truck, perhaps, because the ceiling rose ten feet above them, the walls wider. Off the main tunnel shot smaller tunnels that spiderwebbed back into the darkness.
“You guess so?”
She kept walking. “My sister, Penny, was like a bulldog investigating Edward’s case. It wouldn’t have been solved if it weren’t for her, but along the way, a few people got murdered and... of course, that wasn’t her fault—and she nearly died, too—but it felt invasive. Like having her look into his death would also uncover the truth about our engagement.”
“The truth?”
“That we weren’t right for each other. That I was the second choice.”
She said it without emotion, without a hitch in her voice, but the statement still landed in his chest, a deep ache for her.
And then he remembered her words from their conversation at the dinner at Declan’s house.“I just couldn’t admit that I’d said yes to marrying a man just because I didn’t want to be the forgotten older sister.”
Forgotten older sister?
“Tia... why did you think you were forgotten?”
She frowned at him.
“You said you were the forgotten older sister. The second choice.”
She braced her hand on the wall as the tunnel pitched downward. “I was the second choice. Penny was his true love. Edward loved her from the day he rescued her from being kidnapped.”
“What?”
Pulling her hand from the wall, she brushed off the dust, then stared down into the darkness. “Do you still hear the voices?”
Actually, they’d quieted, fallen to nothing. “No.”
She turned, put her hands on her hips. “Maybe we should double back, keep listening.”
He nodded and she brushed past him. But he couldn’t help himself... “Kidnapped?”
She sighed. “Yes. It’s a long story, but the short of it was that she was kidnapped by our nanny, and Edward, the son of our housekeeper, found her. He hid her until my parents could rescue her—but that bond between them was forever cemented. Except Edward was the chef’s son and four years older than her, and he never... he could never breach that. At least, until he went to MIT and met me, and I don’t know. I am sure he loved me... just not like he loved Pen.”
She started back up the tunnel. “It was glaringly clear to me, especially after we graduated and moved back to Minneapolis. He just... he looked at her the way I hope some man will someday look at me.”
“How’s that?”
She stood slightly above him and turned. “As if I am the part of himself that was always missing. ‘The One.’” She finger quoted the words, then gave him a sad smile. “Probably like how you looked at Juliet.”
Then she kept moving, and he stood, frozen.
Yes.Maybe hehadlooked at Juliet that way. Or maybe he’d just seen Juliet as an extension of himself. Not completing him, but belonging with him. Which, at the time, felt perfectly right.
Still did, maybe.
Because, yes, he’d always thought she wasthe One.
Tia had moved up the tunnel, back to flatter ground, a wider space, and stopped.
“What—”
She held up a hand. Listened. Then looked at him and crooked her finger.
He climbed up next to her, stilled.