The business trips that had multiplied over the past two years, always to cities I couldn't quite place on a map. The whispered phone calls he took in the garage. The time last month he'd asked, so casually, if I could dig through the attic for my late grandmother's old land papers.
At 6:40, I heard tires on gravel.
I brushed it aside the way I always did. Nathan had been quieter lately, sure. Distracted. But he still kissed me goodbye. He still called Lily "buttercup."
****
By six o'clock I couldn't sit still. I grabbed my purse, slipped into my heels, and pulled out of the driveway thirty minutes ahead of schedule, humming, sure that in a few hours I'd be laughing over candlelight with the man who had promised me forever.
The gravel path curved around the restaurant, and I followed it, smiling to myself about Nathan's surprise. Hidden behind a boxwood hedge, I sat on a bench overlooking the lake and waited.
