Borrow My Seat novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What Am I

"No," Chantal said.

She said it to the paper on the counter, not to me.

"That isn't how it works. I have a license. I have a cake with our names on it."

The clerk folded her hands.

"Ma'am, a second marriage can't stand while the first one does."

"Then what am I?"

Her voice cracked on the last word, and it carried down the whole hall.

Nobody answered her.

In the line behind us a teenage boy lifted his phone, and then a woman in a nurse's jacket lifted hers.

Chantal saw the lenses.

She had spent years holding a phone on other people, and she turned toward these two with her mouth open and no joke ready.

"Don't film me," she said. "Stop it. That isn't allowed."

"You did it to my sister," the woman said.

Her voice was flat and tired.

"At her bridal brunch, last spring. You walked in with a banner and told forty people she was sleeping with your husband."

"That was a game."

"She never went back to that restaurant. She never went back to that job, either."

Chantal stared at her.

I watched her try to remember the face, and I watched her fail.

She turned on Lane, who had slid a half step toward the exit.

"Don't move."

"Chantal, we can talk about this in the car."

"No. Say it here."

"Say what?"

"Which one of us is your wife?"

He glanced at the line, at the guard, at the lenses.

"It's complicated," he said.

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