He Had Me Drowned, Then Wept at My Grave novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: What She Ran From

I told him at six in the morning, at his kitchen table, with the newspaper between us and two cups of coffee going cold.

"Leo Vasilakis," I said.

"My husband.

"He's alive, and he's the one who put this under your door."

Anders didn't say anything.

He sat across from me in his undershirt with his big hands around the mug, and waited.

"I married him when I was twenty-three.

"My father owed a man on the docks forty thousand dollars for a boat, and Leo cleared it the day I said yes.

"He was charming for about a year."

I laid my left hand on the table and turned the wrist over.

A thin white line ran across it, where the bone had been set crooked.

"That was the second year.

"I'd burned the rice.

"The ribs were the third year, a staircase.

"I told the doctor I fell on the dock.

"Everybody on the docks knew I hadn't."

My voice was perfectly level.

I had practiced it.

"The day I told them I was pregnant, his stepmother laid out pictures of me with a man who drove me to the doctor.

"Leo said, take her to the causeway, and see she doesn't come back.

"Twelve people at the table.

"Nobody said a word."

I looked up.

Anders had put the mug down, very carefully.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"I put my wedding ring in the lamb gravy," I said, "and walked out into the hurricane evacuation.

"His sister, Callie, drove me to the bus.

"I've been Dara Lund ever since.

"Irini's his."

The refrigerator hummed.

Down on the pier a ship's horn sounded once, long, low.

I had never told anyone any of it, and I waited for the pity.

"What do you want?" Anders said.

I stared at him.

"What?"

"What do you want to do about it?"

His voice was quiet and flat.

"I'll drive you wherever you want to go.

"I'll sit outside a door.

"I'll help you pack, or hide, or get a lawyer.

"I won't do any of it unless you tell me to."

I'd expected him to say he'd kill Leo.

Every man I had ever known would have said it, and meant the wrong thing by it.

"You're not going to say you'll handle it," I said.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because it's yours," he said.

"And because the last man who decided what you needed is the one who put you in a storm."

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