Chapter 12. Ring
Tuesday, December 24th, 1929
Christmas Eve dinner at the Parkinsons was a quiet, but grave, affair. The cook and the maids spent the day preparing an extravagant dinner, laying out polished silverware, glazing the juicy turkey until the very last moment, sweetening the pudding at every chance they got.
Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson insisted on having their daughter over every year. She would plead, she would whine, she would complain, but she would always go, feeling the last shreds of her education pushing her through the door and into the foyer.
Every once in a while, they would also invite a suitable bachelor for her to marry. Over the years, the bachelors had grown balding, older, greasier, more impatient. The last one had been widowed thrice, and she had felt a shiver of horror crawl through her spine as he gawked at her. "Thank God I know a million ways to kill," she had thought, imagining the ninety-eight-year-old man crushing her with all his weight on their wedding night.
This year, Pansy would not have to pretend. She would wear Ginevra Potter's engagement ring on her finger and make up an upcoming wedding to satisfy her parents' thirst for a holy union.
Fate, though, had other plans. As Pansy glided into the dining room, ready to spill her lie on the exquisitely dressed table, she noticed the oddly shaped scar of this year's bachelor's forehead.