PART 2 — THE WEDDING RING HE NEVER STOPPED LOVING

“Claire,” Ethan whispered. “If you ask me to leave, I’ll go.”

I hated him a little for saying it.

Because he was giving me the choice I had spent two years wishing someone would offer me.

I loosened my grip on his shirt.

But I didn’t step away.

“Why did you kiss me?”

His expression тιԍнтened.

“Because I thought you were going to fall.”

“That explains catching me. Not kissing me.”

For one brief moment, something almost like a smile touched his mouth.

Then it disappeared.

“Because I’ve wanted to do that for two years.”

The confession landed harder than the thunder.

Two years.

Two years of delivering clay every Thursday, leaving coffee beside my wheel when he knew I’d forgotten breakfast, fixing the broken latch on my studio door without asking for anything in return.

Two years of looking everywhere except at me.

I swallowed.

“Then why didn’t you?”

His gaze drifted toward the chipped saucer beside the sink.

Toward the wedding band.

“Because that ring belongs to a man I promised I’d never betray.”

The room seemed to grow colder.

I stepped out of his arms.

“Daniel is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, Ethan.”

“I know.”

“Then what exactly are you betraying?”

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“His last wish.”

I stared at him.

My late husband had been gone for three years. The accident on the mountain road had taken him in November, leaving me with a mortgage, a pottery studio, and a silence so complete that some nights I turned on the radio just to hear another human voice.

Ethan had been Daniel’s closest friend.

He’d been the one who identified the truck.

The one who helped carry the coffin.

The one who sat outside my hospital room when I collapsed at the funeral.

And the one who had disappeared from my life for six months afterward, returning one Thursday morning with a delivery of clay and an apology he never explained.

“What did Daniel ask you?” I whispered.

Ethan looked toward the window.

“Not tonight.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Claire—”

“You don’t get to kiss me like that and then hide behind a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ man’s promise.”

He flinched.

It was small, but I saw it.

Then the lights went out.

The studio plunged into darkness.

The woodstove cast a faint orange glow across the floor, and rain rattled the roof like handfuls of gravel.

Ethan reached for the lantern hanging near the door.

Before he could light it, headlights swept across the window.

A vehicle had stopped outside.

My stomach тιԍнтened.

“Are you expecting someone?”

“No.”

He moved to the window, keeping his body between me and the glᴀss.

A truck door slammed.

Then came footsteps through the mud.

Someone knocked.

Three times.

I knew that rhythm.

My breath stopped.

Nobody had knocked that way since the winter Daniel died.

Ethan turned toward me.

And whatever he saw on my face made him whisper, “Who is it?”

I couldn’t answer.

The knock came again.

Then a woman’s voice called through the door.

“Claire? It’s Margaret.”

My mother-in-law.

I hadn’t seen Margaret Hale in eleven months.

The last time she’d stood in my studio, she’d accused me of keeping Daniel’s things because I couldn’t accept that he was gone.

She’d left with his old leather suitcase.

Now she was standing outside in a storm at nearly nine o’clock at night.

And she hadn’t come alone.

I opened the door before Ethan could stop me.

Margaret stood beneath a black umbrella, her silver hair plastered against her cheeks.

Beside her was a tall man in a charcoal overcoat, holding a leather document case.

I recognized him immediately.

Mr. Whitmore.

Daniel’s attorney.

“Claire,” Margaret said, glancing past me.

Her eyes landed on Ethan.

Then on his damp shirt.

Then on the space between us.

Her mouth тιԍнтened.

“I see we’re interrupting something.”

I felt heat crawl up my neck.

“Why are you here?”

Mr. Whitmore stepped forward.

“I’m sorry to arrive without warning. But something has come to light regarding Daniel’s estate.”

My fingers curled around the doorframe.

“What kind of something?”

He opened the document case.

“A letter.”

Margaret let out a brittle laugh.

“A letter he should have written three years ago.”

Ethan went utterly still.

I noticed.

And suddenly, I remembered the ring.

The chipped saucer.

The promise.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Mr. Whitmore removed a sealed envelope.

My name was written across the front.

In Daniel’s handwriting.

Claire.

I hadn’t seen those letters in three years.

My knees nearly buckled.

“Where did you get that?”

“Your husband’s safe-deposit box,” the attorney answered. “It was opened yesterday after a banking discrepancy brought an old account to our attention.”

Margaret looked at Ethan.

“Go on, then. Tell her.”

Ethan’s face had lost every trace of color.

“Margaret, don’t.”

She ignored him.

“Daniel knew he was dying before the accident.”

The world seemed to tilt.

“What?”

“He went to see his doctor six weeks before he died,” she continued. “He was told something that changed everything. And he made Ethan promise to keep it from you.”

I looked at Ethan.

He didn’t deny it.

My voice came out thin.

“What did Daniel know?”

The attorney held out the envelope.

“Perhaps you should read his letter.”

I took it with trembling hands.

The paper inside smelled faintly of cedar.

The first line nearly stopped my heart.

My darling Claire,

If you’re reading this, then I’ve failed to tell you the truth while I was alive.

I pressed my hand against my mouth.

The next paragraph blurred.

There is something about the night of my accident that I never told you.

A gust of wind rattled the door.

Ethan took one step toward me.

I raised my hand.

“Don’t.”

He stopped.

I forced myself to keep reading.

Ethan wasn’t supposed to be driving that night.

My eyes flew to his.

He looked as though he had been waiting years for this exact moment.

I read the sentence again.

Then the next.

And if he has kept his promise, he has probably spent every Thursday bringing you clay, pretending he came only because he was doing me a favor.

My breath caught.

Thursday.

Every delivery.

Every quiet kindness.

Every time Ethan had looked at my wedding ring and turned away.

The letter continued.

Claire, there’s a reason I asked him to stay near you.

But there’s another reason I asked him never to love you.

The paper shook between my fingers.

Margaret closed her eyes.

And Ethan whispered, “I’m sorry.”

I stared at him.

“Why?”

He looked at the wedding band beside the sink.

“Because Daniel didn’t just ask me to protect you.”

His voice cracked.

“He asked me to tell you what really happened on that mountain road.”

Outside, thunder rolled over the valley.

I looked down at the final lines.

And then I saw the date.

The date Daniel had written the letter.

Six days before his funeral.

But beneath his signature was a second message, written in different ink.

A message I was certain hadn’t been there before.

Claire, if Ethan has kissed you, don’t marry him until you know whose blood was on his hands.

I stopped breathing.

Ethan saw the words.

And for the first time since I’d known him, he looked at me not like a man afraid of losing the woman he loved.

But like a man afraid she was finally going to discover what he’d done.

To be continued in Part 3.

Part 3 can reveal what really happened on the mountain road, why Daniel made Ethan swear that promise, and the secret hidden inside the wedding ring.