For Our 10th Anniversary, My Husband Gave Me a Green Dress and My Sister a Baby novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Tape

The tape hissed for a few seconds.

Then a chair scraped, and my father's voice came out of the little gray machine, younger than I remembered.

"Joan, let's be adults about this. I've been unhappy for a long time. If you'd been warmer, none of it would have happened."

A woman laughed softly.

"I'm not here to make a scene," Dolores said on the tape. "I only wanted you to hear it from me, Joan. Woman to woman."

I knew this day.

I had lived it.

"Lena, honey," my mother's voice said, perfectly calm. "Put your shoes on and go swing until I call you."

A small pair of feet ran across linoleum.

A door banged.

I had been eight, and I had gone.

I had never once asked what was said after I left.

"Now," my mother said on the tape. "Say the rest of it."

"Dolores has a daughter," my father said. "Mine. She's one. I'm not going to pretend she doesn't exist. I want a divorce, and I'll keep the house."

"Which house?"

"This one."

"My father left this house to me," my mother said. "And the print shop, and the building it sits in. Your name is on neither. You signed the paper yourself the day we married."

Nobody spoke.

"You told me it was yours," Dolores said to him, and her voice had lost its sweetness.

"It's Joan's," he said, very low.

"You told me you'd leave her with nothing."

"I can't leave her with nothing, Dolores. I have nothing."

← Chapter 12 · All chapters · Chapter 14 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend