The man my stepsister called a “hideous cripple” arrived at our wedding in a wheelchair, and the instant I saw his face, I realized Serena had made the biggest mistake of her life.
Chapter 2
I gripped the edge of the table.
“You’re Finn.”
“I was.”
“You disappeared.”
Adam’s expression darkened.
“I didn’t disappear.”
He looked down at his wheelchair.
“I fell during a hike.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
The memory came back with terrible clarity.
Adam had missed breakfast.
Then lunch.
Counselors whispered.
By evening, they told us there had been an accident and refused to say more.
“I asked about you every day.”
“You left.”
“Camp ended.”
“I wrote to you.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“For almost a year.”
“I never got anything.”
“Every month, Fiona.”
His voice cracked.
“I wrote to the children’s home.”
I felt sick.
“My adoption was finalized while I was at camp. When I returned, the Larsons took me home almost immediately.”
Adam looked at me.
“You never saw the letters?”
“Never.”
He leaned back.
For fifteen years, this man had believed I had forgotten him.
And I had spent fifteen years believing the first real friend I’d ever had simply vanished.
“I thought you learned what happened to me,” he said. “I thought you decided the boy in the wheelchair wasn’t worth writing back to.”
“Finn, no.”
His eyes closed briefly at the old name.
“You were the only person at Blue Pine who treated me like I belonged somewhere,” I said. “I cried when you disappeared.”
He opened his eyes.
“I looked for you too.”
Silence filled the room.
Then Adam asked, “You really didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Not when you agreed to marry me?”
“I didn’t even know your first name until two weeks before the wedding.”
His mouth twisted.
“Serena was thorough.”
“She told me you were bitter, disfigured, and impossible.”
“I am occasionally bitter.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
A tiny change appeared in his expression.
Almost a smile.
It disappeared quickly.
“Fifteen years is a long time,” he said.
“I know.”
“We aren’t those children anymore.”
“No.”
“But I’d like to know who you became.”
That surprised him.
I stood.
“Not because you’re rich. Not because we’re married. And not because I feel sorry for you.”
I hesitated.
“Because I missed my friend.”
For the next week, Adam avoided me.
But not quite as thoroughly as before.
He started appearing at breakfast.
Then dinner.
Sometimes he asked a question.
Sometimes he answered mine.
I learned that after the accident, he had spent nearly two years in rehabilitation. His parents had given him every medical advantage money could buy, but no amount of money could undo the spinal injury.
“The strange part,” he told me one evening, “is that the pain wasn’t the worst thing.”
“What was?”
“People.”
He stared into the fire.
“Before the accident, I was Adam Blackwood. Afterward, I was inspirational if I got dressed by myself and tragic if I had a bad day. Strangers started talking to whoever stood beside me instead of talking to me.”
“I understand.”
He looked at me.
“Do you?”
“People used to talk about me like I wasn’t in the room too. The orphan. The adopted one. The lucky girl.”
Adam’s expression softened.
“Lucky.”
“That’s what they called me whenever I was unhappy. Lucky people apparently aren’t allowed to complain.”
A week after the wedding, Serena and Nathan visited.
The moment Serena saw Adam in a tailored charcoal suit, her entire manner changed.
“Adam,” she said, drawing out his name. “You look wonderful.”
Nathan glanced at her.
Adam merely nodded.
“Thank you.”
She sat far too close.
She touched his arm when she laughed.
She asked about his investments, his estate, the renovations, his company.
The same woman who had called him a miserable burden now looked at him as though she were mentally calculating everything she’d traded away.
After they left, I found Adam in the library.
“Your sister is subtle,” he said.
I laughed.
“Serena has never been subtle.”
“She was flirting with me.”
“I noticed.”
“Were you jealous?”
“No.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
That earned an actual smile.
Then he reached into a drawer.
“Come here.”
Inside was an old photo album.
He opened it.
There we were.
Two children beside Blue Pine Lake.
I was painfully thin, with dark hair in crooked braids. Adam stood beside me, grinning, his arm around my shoulders.
“You kept these?”
“All of them.”
He turned another page.
Us in a canoe.
Us roasting marshmallows.
Us sitting on a dock with our bare feet in the water.
“I kept them because you didn’t know who my family was,” he said. “You didn’t know my father owned half a dozen companies.”
“I thought your parents just made really good cookies.”
“They did.”
“You never shared enough.”
“You stole them.”
“Details.”
He laughed.
It was the same laugh.
Older.
Deeper.
But the same.
He closed the album.
“I needed to know something.”
“What?”
“Whether the Fiona I remembered still existed.”
My throat tightened.
“Does she?”
“I think so.”
He studied me.
“She just got buried under people telling her what she deserved.”
I couldn’t speak.
Adam reached for my hand.
“Maybe we start over.”
“As husband and wife?”
“No.”
His thumb brushed across my knuckles.
“As Fiona and Finn.”
That night, someone knocked on my bedroom door.
Outside sat a tray with two mugs of hot chocolate and chocolate-chip cookies.
A note rested beside them.
Story night by the fire.
Half the cookies are mine.
I smiled all the way downstairs.
Over the next month, something changed between us.
Not suddenly.
It happened through ordinary things.
Coffee in the morning.
Long conversations in the garden.
Arguments over old movies.
Adam teaching me how to read financial reports because he discovered I had an instinct for numbers.
Me learning when to offer help and when not to.
One afternoon, Adam handed me a proposal from one of his companies.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know enough.”
“Read it anyway.”
I did.
Twenty minutes later I pointed to a paragraph.
“This supplier is charging twice for the same transportation cost.”
Adam stared at the page.
Then at me.
“You’re right.”
“I am?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“No one’s ever told me I was good at anything except cleaning.”
Something painful crossed his face.
“Then the people around you were fools.”
It may have been the first time in my life somebody said something like that and expected me to believe it.
Two weeks later, an invitation arrived from my parents.
Dinner.
Adam held it up.
“We don’t have to go.”
I groaned.
“Do you want to?”
His old camp smile appeared.
“I think your family might benefit from seeing what a terrible tragedy our marriage has become.”
I laughed.
“That’s wicked.”
“Absolutely.”
That evening, I wore a blue dress Adam had chosen for me.
When I came downstairs, he stared long enough to make my pulse jump.
“You look beautiful.”
“You look pretty good yourself.”
He extended his hand.
“Ready, Mrs. Blackwood?”
I placed mine in his.
“Ready, Finn.”
At my parents’ house, Serena opened the door.
Her eyes went immediately to our joined hands.
And I knew before dinner was over, she was going to try to take one more thing from me.
This time, she had chosen the wrong thing.
