A Marriage Left Behind novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Thane's Porch

Thane's POV

I was across her lawn before Bev's car turned onto the street.

Maura was sitting on the bottom stair with her phone against her ear and a brass key in her other fist.

She didn't look hurt.

She looked like she was adding up a column.

"Read me the rest," she was saying, and then she listened to Bev's voice read it, and her face didn't change at all.

I sat down on the stair beside her and said nothing.

When she hung up, she handed me the phone, and I read the post myself.

It was eleven paragraphs long and signed "A Mother Who Prays."

It said Maura had run off on Christmas Eve with the family's money.

It said Brady was sleeping on a couch, and a grieving father was too ashamed to speak.

It said there were "difficulties in the marriage that nobody outside could understand."

Under it, church members had left hearts and prayers.

"She never says I'm wrong," Maura said. "She says she's sad."

"That's why it works."

"Bev wants me to post the ledger."

"What do you want?"

She turned and looked at me, and I saw her catch what I had done.

"I want her to say it with her face in the room," Maura said. "Not on a screen where she can delete it."

"Then don't post."

"Everyone will think I did it."

"For a while," I said. "Yes."

She took that in, and she nodded.

Bev came up the walk in a bright green coat with a pie in each hand and a tablet under her arm, already angry.

She put the pies on the porch rail and kissed Maura on the top of the head.

By the time she'd finished telling us what she thought of Judith, the street had started to arrive.

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