But now it lay flat, hollow, empty.
"Stop pretending. Just tell me the truth, okay?"
Jordan wouldn't meet my eyes. He fumbled for the words. "There's a scene in the haunted house that needed a ring as a prop. To make it feel more real, I gave it to Penelope."
"But it doesn't matter. That was just a rehearsal. I already ordered a grander wedding ring—that's the one I actually want to give you."
By the time he finished, my mouth was full of bitterness.
"You rehearsed a proposal with a haunted house actor? Then what am I?"
Jordan looked bewildered. "What do you mean, rehearsed a proposal? I already told you, it was an accident!"
I waved my hand again and again, refusing to keep talking about it.
"Jordan, I honestly don't know how to talk to you anymore."
The low pressure hung over the whole night.
The next day, a childhood friend of Jordan's, just back in the country, asked him out to dinner.
To break the cold war, Jordan told me to come along. Halfway through the meal I went to the restroom to touch up my makeup, and coming back I stopped outside the door of our private room.
The door hadn't shut all the way. Dudley Sanchez's voice drifted out, clearly needling him. "Jordan, why is it that for all these years you only ever fall for mutes?"
My fingers were already on the handle. I didn't move.
"First there was Rebecca Fox, your one great love—deaf and mute, and you wouldn't let her go, still carrying a torch even after she died."
Dudley was grinning through it. "And this Caroline now, never mind her—you kept her around long enough that you basically nursed her back to health. But then where does Penelope come from? Man, are you running a shelter for the disabled?"
I heard Jordan laugh once.
"It's not as dramatic as you make it sound."
"Caroline really does look like Rebecca. When we first met, even the way she talked was exactly the same."
"Later she slowly got her voice back, and I honestly couldn't get used to it. Looking back now, the reason I was willing to get close to her back then was probably that mute quality. It overlapped with the person in my memory."
Dudley whistled. "So Caroline was just your stand-in? Then what about Penelope?"
Jordan's voice went flat. "Penelope was an accident."
"You know the feeling I get around Penelope? Like my heart's been silent for a long time, and then she showed up, and all at once there was an echo again."
"Once Caroline was cured, I never felt that anymore."
"She's too normal. More and more like an ordinary person. Sometimes I look at her and I miss that little girl who used to hide in the corner, unable to make a sound."
Dudley asked, "That diary of Rebecca's… do you still have it?"
"Mm."
My fingers slid off the handle.
That loss of speech from when I was fourteen was crawling back, inch by inch.
I fled home like a refugee.
I dug out the diary Dudley had mentioned. The first page, all of it, was Rebecca.
I don't know how long I turned pages before I finally found my own name.
"A new girl transferred into class today. Her name is Caroline Butler."
"A little mute. Another little mute."
"I asked the teacher if I could sit with her, and the teacher was surprised—said I'd never sat with anyone before."
"Maybe it's because there aren't many girls like Rebecca, and she's one of them."
I closed the diary, tears breaking loose, my whole body shaking beyond control.
"Why aren't you back yet? Does the restroom really take this long?"
Jordan's call came through. I fought to force out a single syllable to answer him, pressing frantically at my chest, and no sound would come.
I wanted to ask him who Rebecca was.
Whether he'd sat down beside me back then only because, like her, I couldn't speak.
