Candles in glass hurricanes, white flowers along the beams, the night sea going black beyond the panes: the midsummer table at Carrack House is laid for fourteen, and all fourteen chairs have gone quiet, because you are standing at the end of it with the wooden box open in both hands.
Walter Garrowby looks at the ring and not at you. Navy suit, white shirt open at the collar because he loosened it during the second course, dark curls going silver at the temples, a day of stubble, one hand flat against his chest as if he is keeping something in.
"You bought it yourself,"
he says, and the room hears it.
"My gran had the promise written on the back of a menu. I told her I would keep it when I was old enough to know what it cost."
He lays his napkin down.
"I have known what it costs for eleven years."
His cousin Maren starts to say something from the far end of the table and he lifts one finger without looking at her, and she stops.
He comes around the table, takes the box out of your hands, closes it, and puts it in his jacket pocket.
"Not here,"
he says.
"Not with both families eating. Come out to the steps, where the tide is loud enough that I can say it badly and only you will hear it."
He holds the glass door open with one arm and waits, and behind him the candles are bending and the sea is going black.