He Let Them Think She Was His novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Offer

Ward walked down my barn aisle with his hat in one hand and the gate keys in the other.

He stopped between me and Jesse, close enough to touch either of us.

He looked at his son's cheek, where my handprint was still red.

"Well," he said. "I see it's out."

Nobody answered him.

"I'm not going to insult you by denying it, Abby. You're too smart, and I'm too tired." He sat down on a hay bale.

"So let's be sensible people."

"Sensible," I said.

"I'll tell you what I want. I want my wife to die in her bed at eighty, not on a kitchen floor at sixty-three. That's all. I have never wanted anything else from this."

"That isn't all you want."

"It is the whole of what matters."

I took a step toward him.

"You left another woman alone in a hospital in Casper while your wife lay in one in Sheridan."

"You had your son sit with her. You had him sign a state form with his own name."

"You let me believe my husband had a child with a stranger, and you stood on that lawn and handed her an envelope."

"I did," Ward said calmly. "And I'd do it again."

"Dad," Jesse said.

"Be quiet, son. I'm talking to your wife."

His eyes came back to me.

They were the same gray, with the same dark ring.

I'd never noticed before how cold the color looked on him.

"Here's my offer," he said. "The east ditch."

"The easement runs across your lower pasture and has for sixty years. I'll quitclaim it to you tonight, in writing."

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