Chapter 13: What He Took

We put everything back the way we found it.

Sonya photographed every page a second time, because she said one set of pictures was a hope and two was evidence.

I rolled the rubber band onto the folder in the same place, and Nolan locked the drawer.

I kept the brass key.

Out on the sidewalk, Sonya stood with her empty coffee cup and looked up at the pale sky.

"I'm going home to sleep for ten hours," she said. "Then I'm going to dream about hitting him with a defibrillator."

"Sonya."

"On the lowest setting. For a long time."

She hugged me hard enough to lift my heels, and she hugged Nolan too, which surprised both of us.

"Don't screw it up," she told him.

"I'll try not to."

"Try harder."

She walked to her car, and her shoulders were shaking, and I let her have that in private.

Nolan drove with the heat on high, though I wasn't cold.

"There's a reporter at the Sun who owes me a favor," he said. "A lawyer who'd file by noon. Bianca's own station would run it by dinner."

"No."

"Jo, he took four years from you."

"I know what he took."

My voice came out flat and steady.

"If it's in a Saturday post, he cries. He says the clinic made a mistake, and he hires someone to call my pictures forged."

"So what do you want?"

"I want him in a tuxedo, holding a plaque, with everyone he's ever sold a membership to watching."

Nolan was quiet for a block.

Then he laughed, one short breath through his nose.

"The Harbor Business Foundation dinner," he said. "They're naming him Small Business Leader of the Year."

"You're kidding."

"My company bought a table in August. I signed the check myself." He glanced at me. "It's nine days from today. Bianca presents the award."

I looked out the window at the harbor going silver.

Keep reading free with an account. Start A Stranger Told Me My Husband Cheated, So We Cheated Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.