Chapter 4 - THE WATCH IN THE PURSE
Chloe backed up so fast her white lace heel snapped cleanly off her shoe.
She caught herself against the wrought-iron railing of the church steps, her face drained of every drop of color as two hundred wedding guests craned their necks to see the woman on her knees holding the stained silver watch.
"I don't know what that is!" Chloe cried, her voice shrill and panicked. "Toby, get back inside with the nanny right now!"
Seven-year-old Toby stood frozen near the top landing, his lower lip trembling at the sudden shouting. "I didn't break it, Auntie Chloe," the boy said in a small, frightened voice. "It was making a funny ticking sound under your scarf."
I knelt beside my mother on the cold limestone. Her rough hands were shaking violently as she turned the battered Seiko watch over in her palm.
"Let me see it," I said quietly.
She let me take it without taking her eyes off Chloe.
It was an old automatic diver’s watch—the kind my grandfather used to wear in the nineties—and the alarm mechanism inside the dented casing was buzzing faintly against my palm, set for 12:00 PM. Noon. The exact hour our wedding ceremony had started.
And across the olive-green nylon strap was a dark, crusted smear that anyone who had ever cut themselves knew wasn't rust or mud. It was dried blood.
I stood up slowly, holding the buzzing watch in my right hand, and walked two steps up the stairs until I was standing directly in front of my bride.
"Chloe," I said, my voice terrifyingly calm. "Why is my twin brother’s bloodied watch inside your bridal purse?"
Chloe looked past me toward her father, Gregory Sterling, and then toward mine. Neither man stepped forward to rescue her. My father’s jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle spasmed beneath his cheek, while Gregory looked as though he were about to be sick on the church rose petals.
"Daniel, please, not out here," Chloe whispered, reaching out with trembling, manicured fingers to touch my tuxedo sleeve. "Let’s go inside the vestry—just you, me, and our fathers. I can explain everything, I swear to God I was trying to protect you!"
"Protect me from what?" I pulled my arm out of her reach. "You told me five minutes ago that this woman accosted you in a shelter parking lot with a fake photograph. Now you have her son’s watch in your purse?"
"He came to my apartment on Monday night!" Chloe burst out, tears finally spilling over her mascara as she realized the lie had collapsed. "Not her—him! A man who looked just like you, Daniel! When I opened my front door on Monday evening, I thought it was you standing in the hallway wearing a dirty canvas jacket and work boots!"
A murmur of shock swept through the wedding party behind us. My best man, Marcus, stepped down from the pillar, staring at Chloe in disbelief.
"He had a scar on the right side of his chin instead of the left," Chloe sobbed, wrapping her arms around her waist as the cold wind hit her bare shoulders. "He showed me that 2003 photograph of him and his mother. He told me his name was Leo Miller, that he worked as a welder on the south side docks, and that for twenty-three years he and his mother had stayed in hiding under her maiden name because Arthur had threatened to have Helen committed to a state asylum if she ever came near you!"
I turned my head slowly to look at my father.
Arthur Vance didn't deny it. He stood like a stone monument on the top step, his hands clasped behind his back, calculating his exposure like the ruthless logistics mogul he was.
"Then why did Leo come out of hiding four days before my wedding?" I asked Chloe.
"Because three weeks ago, your mother got sick," Helen spoke up from the step below me, getting to her feet with a hand on the iron railing. Her voice was raw with fury. "The smoke damage in my lungs turned into a mass on my left bronchus. The county clinic told me I needed thoracic surgery we couldn't afford on Leo’s shipyard wages. I begged Leo not to go near the Vances—I told him I’d rather die in the shelter clinic than let Arthur know we were still in Chicago—but Leo wouldn't listen."
Helen pointed a shaking finger at Gregory Sterling.
"Leo found out from the papers that his twin brother was marrying Gregory Sterling’s daughter this week," Helen said. "Leo went to Chloe on Monday night to beg her to ask you for fifty thousand dollars for my surgery—quietly, without Arthur finding out, promising we would move to Oregon the day after the operation and never bother your family again!"
"And I wanted to help him!" Chloe cried, grabbing my arm with both hands. "Daniel, you have to believe me! When I saw his face, I knew he was telling the truth! He was your brother! Look in my purse—I went to the bank on Tuesday morning and withdrew ten thousand dollars of my own savings to take to his mother at St. Jude’s shelter as a down payment while I figured out how to tell you!"
I looked down at the white bank envelope lying on the step beside the scattered roses. Stamped across the front was LaSalle Private Bank — $10,000 Cash Withdrawal — Nov 3.
For a split second, a flicker of desperate hope tried to take root in my chest. Maybe Chloe hadn't been the monster here. Maybe she had just panicked when my long-lost brother showed up on her doorstep four days before our wedding.
"Then how did you get his watch, Chloe?" I asked softly. "And why is there blood on the strap?"
Chloe’s gaze dropped to the limestone steps. She couldn't look at me.
"Because before I went to the shelter on Tuesday," Chloe whispered, her voice trembling so violently I could barely make out the words, "I was terrified that Leo was going to blackmail us after the wedding. So I called my father and Arthur on Monday night and told them Leo had come to my apartment."
My mother let out a sharp, choked cry.
"You told them where Leo worked," Helen gasped, stepping up the stairs toward Chloe until I had to hold my mother back with one arm. "Leo called me at the shelter at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning! He said Mr. Sterling and Mr. Vance had agreed to meet him at Pier 42 in Calumet Harbor before his shift started to pay for my hospital admission and sign a medical trust! He never came back from that pier!"
The silence on the church steps became suffocating. Even the street traffic half a block down Michigan Avenue seemed to fade away.
I looked from my mother’s terrified face to Gregory Sterling.
Chloe’s father was sweating through his silk collar despite the forty-degree chill.
"Gregory," I said, walking up the remaining three steps until I stood toe-to-toe with the man who had drafted my prenuptial agreement and toasted me at our rehearsal dinner last night. "Where is my brother?"
"He’s fine, Daniel," Gregory said quickly, his voice thin and reedy as he backed toward the church doorway. "He’s completely fine! There was a scuffle on the pier when Arthur tried to take the original hospital documents back from him—Leo slipped on the wet steel gangway and cut his forehead on a mooring cleat. His watch strap caught on the railing and broke when he pulled away!"
"If he walked away on Tuesday morning," I said, holding up the bloodied Seiko watch between us, "why was this watch inside Chloe’s purse today?"
Chloe looked up at her father in horror, realizing in that exact second what Gregory had done.
"Dad?" Chloe whispered, backing away from him. "You told me on Tuesday afternoon that you found that watch in the back of your town car after you drove Leo to the train station! You told me to hold onto it in my lockbox so the maid wouldn't see it!"
Little Toby, still standing by the rectory door with his nanny, pointed a small finger at the watch in my hand.
"Grandpa Gregory didn't find that on Tuesday," Toby said clearly, the seven-year-old’s forehead wrinkling in confusion. "Grandpa had that watch in his coat pocket this morning when he came back from feeding the dog at the lake house. That’s why his boots had red paint on them."
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Every head on the steps snapped toward Gregory’s feet.
Tucked beneath the cuff of Gregory Sterling’s black dress trousers, right along the welt of his left leather Oxford, was a bright streak of wet, oxidized red primer—the exact rust-proof marine paint used on the dry-dock shipping containers at Vance Logistics’ abandoned Calumet Boatyard.
