The Fiancé Who Didn't Want Me

"There isn't going to be a wedding."

I took the report from Diane before she could lift it again.

"They've already cancelled it. You heard the letter."

"Letters can be followed by other letters."

"I'm pregnant by someone else."

"Not if you get the timing right."

For a moment, I couldn't speak.

She straightened the quilt on my bed, as though we were discussing laundry. "You meet him, you make him feel sorry for you, and you keep your mouth shut about this until he's committed. Men aren't as clever as they think."

"You want me to lie about whose baby it is?"

"I want you to stop ruining opportunities."

I opened the bedroom door. "Get out."

Her hand struck my cheek before I saw it coming.

I caught her wrist on the second swing.

"You don't get to do that anymore."

Dad appeared in the hall. He looked at my hand around Diane's wrist rather than the mark on my face.

"Let go of your mother."

"She isn't my mother."

Diane wrenched free and snatched the heavy stick Dad used to prop the back window. I moved away, but Grandma came through the kitchen doorway at the same instant.

"Leave her alone!"

The crack was awful.

Grandma crumpled against the doorframe, then slid to the floor.

I dropped beside her. Blood ran beneath her gray hair. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't looking at me.

"Call an ambulance," I said.

Dad stood frozen.

I screamed it the second time.

At the hospital, Diane called it an accident. I told the staff what I had seen. They took my statement, and a woman spoke to me privately while Grandma was treated.

Nobody waited for payment before helping her. But after the operation came conversations about recovery, rehabilitation, and where she would live when she could leave the ward.

Dad controlled the household money. Grandma had no savings beyond the few bills she'd given me for the clinic. I had been paid in meals and a place to sleep since I was sixteen.

When I asked Dad to arrange the recommended rehabilitation bed, Diane answered.

"Of course we'll help. When you help this family."

I stared at her over the waiting-room table.

"She nearly died because of you."

"And I'm offering to pay for her recovery."

Dad rubbed his face. "Ella, don't make this harder."

There it was: his favorite sentence, reserved for whoever was easiest to hurt.

Diane leaned forward. "Go to the coast. Talk to Cole. Make him change his mind. You stay there until the wedding is settled, and your grandmother gets everything she needs."

I wanted to overturn the table.

Instead, I asked which rehabilitation center.

She showed me the paperwork. I made her sign it and give me the contact number before I agreed to leave. It wasn't enough. It was what I could obtain that afternoon while Grandma lay upstairs asking whether I'd eaten.

I kissed Grandma's forehead the next morning.

"I'll come back soon."

"You don't have to do what they say."

"I'm not," I whispered. "I'm buying us time."

I carried one bag onto the train.

My plan was simple. Stay near Cole's station long enough for Grandma to settle into rehabilitation. Earn enough for the return journey and a room she could share with me. Leave without asking a stranger to raise my child.

Plans looked tidier on trains than they did beside broken-down buses.

By late afternoon, I was standing on a coastal road outside Port Mercy, watching the driver disappear beneath his engine. Rain blew sideways. The station was still miles away.

I began walking.

After half an hour, headlights washed over me. A dark utility vehicle stopped, and a man wearing glasses stepped out.

"Were you on the bus?"

"Unfortunately."

His mouth lifted. "Where are you going?"

"North Coast Maritime Services. I'm looking for Cole Whitmore."

He grew still.

"I'm Ella Bennett," I added. "Our families arranged an engagement."

He took my bag. "I'm Owen Mercer. Cole's away on an assignment. Let's get you out of this weather before we discuss anything else."

The institution had a training yard, offices, and rows of staff cottages beyond a security gate. Owen arranged a visitor pass and a small guest unit. A woman from reception brought towels. He returned with soup, bread, and a spare blanket.

I ate without pretending I wasn't hungry.

"Sorry," I said when I realized he was watching.

"For eating? That's what the soup is for."

Before he gave me the envelope, Owen had been on the telephone in the little office off reception.

The door was open. I heard his side first.

"She's come a long way, Cole. At least speak to her."

A voice answered through the receiver, too thin and distorted for me to recognize.

"Our families have the letter. There is no engagement."

"She's here now. She has nowhere to go tonight."

"Then give her a safe room and a ticket. I won't have her stranded. But don't let her mistake that for a wedding."

Owen looked up and saw me in the doorway.

He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll be a minute."

I should have left. I stayed.

"You're sure you won't meet her?" he asked.

"I've spent a month looking for one woman. I'm not marrying another because my family finds it convenient."

The sharpness in his voice made two clerks at the next desk go quiet.

Owen's expression hardened.

"Then you won't object if I ask her to dinner."

A pause.

"If you like her, ask. I haven't claimed her."

The words should have relieved me. They burned instead.

I backed away before Owen could see that I had heard.

Later, when he brought the money, I knew it wasn't an apology. It was the price of avoiding one conversation.

The next morning, he came with an envelope and a troubled expression.

"I spoke to Cole."

My stomach tightened.

"He says the arrangement has ended. He's met someone, and he wants to be clear rather than let you wait for something he can't offer. This is for your fare home."

I didn't touch the envelope.

"He hasn't even seen me."

"I know."

"I need a few days."

Owen watched me carefully. "Is there a problem at home?"

I couldn't explain the whole filthy bargain. Not while I was still trying to keep it from falling apart.

"My grandmother is ill. I can't go back yet. Please don't make me leave today."

He put the envelope away.

"You can stay until we sort something out."

The relief made my eyes sting.

Before I could thank him, someone called from the path.

"So this is the fiancée."

A young woman in a cream coat surveyed my worn shoes.

"Vanessa Shaw," she announced. "My uncle runs the station. Cole's already told everybody he doesn't want an arranged marriage. You must have missed the message."

"Owen delivered it perfectly clearly."

"Then why are you still here?"

"Because I paid for the journey and haven't grown wings."

Owen turned away, hiding a smile. Vanessa didn't.

She left after warning him about getting involved. I watched her coat vanish between the cottages, then heard a child's frightened cry from the next row.

A small girl stood barefoot on a porch. A woman gripped her upper arm and shook her hard enough to snap her head back.

I was across the path before Owen said my name.

"Let her go."

"Mind your business."

The woman raised her free hand. I pulled a metal chair between them, and the blow struck its back.

Owen stepped in. "Brenda. Inside. Now. I'll call the duty officer."

I knelt before the child. "What's your name?"

"Lucy."

"I'm Ella. You can stay beside me."

That afternoon brought questions, a visit from someone who knew what to do, and a call to Lucy's aunt. Pending arrangements, a neighboring family helped look after her. I spent the evening with her, cutting bread into triangles because she said triangles tasted better.

For an hour, my own fear loosened.

Then I went to the visitors' telephone to call home.

Diane listened to my carefully invented account of how well things were going.

"Good," she said. "Next time I want to hear it from Cole."

"He's working."

"Then arrange a time. Two nights from now, Ella. If he won't speak to me, I see no reason to keep paying for that expensive recovery bed."

She hung up before I could answer.

I remained holding the receiver, while down the corridor Lucy asked Owen whether Ella would come back for her bedtime story.