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Chapter Twenty-Six

ROSALIE

I ’m not dead.

Did you think I was? That I’m some corpse my husband propped up in front of the second-floor window to frighten his guests?

I’m not. I’m very much alive.

And I’m afraid my husband is a murderer.

TWELVE YEARS EARLIER

I can hear the hum of the engine and my body jolts with every imperfection in the road. My teeth sink into my lower lip as I shift in the passenger seat of the broken down Ford. A blindfold covers my eyes, shrouding me in darkness.

I desperately claw at the blindfold with my right hand. Before I can work it loose, a powerful hand encircles my wrist. My boyfriend Nick’s voice cuts through the silence. “Hey, quit doing that,” he says.

I groan. “Nick…”

“I mean it. I want this to be a surprise. No peeking.”

“Fine. How much longer?”

“Ten minutes—tops.”

“At nine minutes and thirty seconds, I’m ripping this blindfold off. I swear, Nick.”

I have been dating Nick Baxter for six years. We met in high school, if you can believe that. High school sweethearts—I know, I know. I never imagined meeting the love of my life in high school, but the second I kissed him at only sixteen years old, I just knew. This was the guy.

Have you ever just met somebody that you clicked with?

That you felt was an extension of yourself?

The missing piece. From the first moment we sat down to dinner on our first date, I felt like I could tell him anything.

And I did. I told him I didn’t want to be a teacher like my parents kept telling me to be.

I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to open my own restaurant.

It was my dream. I fell in love with him for being the only one to believe in me.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that he’s pretty hot. Even with my eyes blindfolded, I can picture his dark blond hair, his slim but muscular build, and his infectious smile. Girls always give Nick a second look, but he only has eyes for me. Whether I deserve it or not, he worships the ground I walk on.

I feel the car swerving to the right, which means he is exiting the highway. Thank God. If we don’t get there soon, I swear I’m going to vomit. If that happens, he’s going to have to clean it up all by himself, because this is his own damn fault.

The car jerks to a halt. Nick’s warm, large hand squeezes my knee. I can imagine the eager look on his face. “Okay, Rosie. We’re here.”

“Can I take off the blindfold?”

“Give me one minute.”

He insists on guiding me out of the car. He rests his hand on top of my head to make sure I don’t bump my head on the door frame. He places his hands on my shoulders and turns me about ninety degrees. Then he yanks off the blindfold.

“Ta-da!” he says.

I blink, adjusting to the light. “Ta-da what?”

“It’s your new restaurant.”

My new restaurant ? Is he joking with me?

I’ve been working as a line cook at a dingy restaurant since graduating culinary school.

The salary is just barely enough that I could give up my waitressing job, since my parents have not given me one penny to subsidize my “ridiculous lifestyle.” Nick recently graduated from college with a degree in business, and he’s been talking about the two of us starting a restaurant.

I said sure, figuring it was just a pipe dream.

And now we are standing in front of a one story building that looks like it should be condemned.

All the windows are cracked, there’s dirt ground into every single crack and crevice, and the door is literally hanging by one hinge.

As I stare at the place, a rat scurries out the front door.

I’m sure there are plenty more where that one came from.

This place is horrible. It is not a good surprise. I feel like the blindfold was unnecessary.

“Oh,” I say. I’m trying to look happy, but it’s straining my acting skills.

“I know it doesn’t look great now,” he says quickly. “But I got it dirt cheap. Trust me, Rosie, this is a great location. I scoped it out, and there are no restaurants along I-93 for twenty minutes in either direction.”

“Mmm,” I say.

“I’m going to help you get it cleaned up,” he says, “and you’ll see, this place is going to be a huge success. I promise.”

“Mmm,” I say again.

He looks me straight in the eyes. “This is your dream. I’m going to make it happen for you.”

He sounds so sure of himself. I love Nick, but I think he overextended himself with this one. But I’ll go along with it. After all, what do I have to lose?

NINE YEARS EARLIER

It feels decadent to be taking a day off.

It’s all I do anymore. Work. The restaurant opens for lunch, and I’m usually there till it closes late in the evening.

I recently hired help so that I could at least have one night off, only after Nick bugged me to do it.

I don’t trust anyone to do as good a job as I do, and also, I love being there.

I love being in the kitchen of my own restaurant. It’s everything I ever wanted.

But today I have a day off, and Nick persuaded me to go to a local carnival. We rode on the roller coaster, then on the Ferris wheel, and now we’re sharing a giant blob of pink cotton candy.

“I forgot how good cotton candy is,” Nick says as he stuffs a big fuzzy wad of it into his mouth. “You should serve this in the restaurant.”

“Um, no.”

“You should. It will probably become your bestselling dessert.”

I give him the side eye. “I’m not even sure if you’re kidding.”

“I’m not!”

I’m still somewhat in disbelief over how successful our restaurant has become.

I’m not going to lie—the first year was rough.

It took forever to get Rosalie’s cleaned up and in condition to serve as a restaurant.

Nick and I worked our butts off. We replaced all the windows, cleaned everything out by hand, bought all new kitchen appliances and furniture for the dining area.

We invested a lot of money and a lot of labor.

And for the first few months, I thought it was all going to be for nothing.

I could count on one hand the number of customers on a given week.

There were about twenty times that first year when I thought about giving up.

I’m not sure what Nick did, but our business picked up at the end of that first year. We started getting steady customers, and the second year, we broke even. The third year, we turned a profit.

Then a few months ago, Nick bought the two houses next door. One for us to live in and the other to turn into a motel.

So we’re going to buy a house together? I said when he told me his plans. That sounds pretty serious. We’re not even married.

Well, we should probably do something about that, he said.

The bastard had a ring in his pocket. I said yes. Obviously. I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.

We’re getting married next month. It will be a small ceremony at City Hall—just close family.

Mostly because all of our money has been sunk into the restaurant and the new motel.

And also, neither of us have big families.

Plus, my parents don’t like Nick. My mother is never clear about why, but she always hints that I could do better, and she doesn’t think much of our restaurant either.

That’s why I don’t speak to her much anymore.

I’m not even sure she’s coming to the wedding.

“I’ll let the cotton candy idea percolate,” Nick says. “In the meantime, what do you want to ride next? Should we ride that one that turns you around in a circle in the air and then upside down?”

I look at the ride he’s pointing to. Just the sight of it makes my stomach turn. “No, thank you. How about…” I look over at a little black tent with the sign on the front with painted black lettering that reads, Fortune-telling, three tickets . “Ooh, I want to get my fortune told!”

Nick snorts. “You don’t need to go to a fortuneteller to know your fortune. I can tell it to you right now.” He presses his fingertips into his temples. “The future is saying you’re going to marry a super handsome business genius, and then you’re going to have five kids together.”

“Hmm. Are you sure the future is saying five kids? Because I’m kind of feeling like it might be three.”

“Pretty sure it’s five.”

We have always talked about having kids in an abstract sort of way, but now that we’re actually getting married, these talks have become a little more serious.

We both want a lot of kids. We’re both only children, and we’ve always wanted big families.

But five seems like an awful lot. And he’s not the one who has to push them out.

“See,” I say, “this is why I need to talk to the fortuneteller. And in the meantime, you can try to win me a decent prize this time.”

Earlier in the day, Nick played a game where he had to knock down bottles with a ball. He did spectacularly badly and insisted the game was rigged. Anyway, he won me a tiny rubber duck, which wasn’t really worth carrying around, so I tossed it.

Nick salutes. “You got it. I’m winning you a stuffed animal so big, one of us will have to ride on top of the hood on the way home.”

That remains to be seen.

While Nick goes to find his game of choice, I walk toward the black tent. I’ve never had my fortune told before, but it always seemed like fun. I don’t believe in stuff like that, but there’s no harm in it.

The curtains of the tent are slightly parted, and I push them aside with my hand and peek my head in.

The tent is lit by only a few candles, but it’s enough to see the contents.

There’s a small wooden table inside, and a folding chair on either side of it.

On one of the two chairs sits a woman with long black hair.

And by black, I mean black . I’ve heard black described as the absence of color, but I never understood that description until I saw this woman’s hair.

She raises her eyes to look at me, and they’re just as black as her hair. So black that I could not possibly see her pupils. “Hello,” she says.