He Never Looked Up at Breakfast, So I Served Him Papers novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Every Card

I did not give him the microphone.

I stood there holding it, and the whole theater waited to see what I would do.

"Give him a minute, Elise," Dot called from the third row, in her waitress voice, which carries.

"Why?"

"Because I want to hear what a man says when he's got nothing left to sell."

A few people laughed, and the laugh died fast.

I held the microphone out, and Stuart took it.

His fingers were cold.

"I'm not going to read the page," he said.

He pulled the folded speech from his pocket and tore it in half.

"Everything on it was written by Bryce Haldane and signed by me. It's a lie. I'm sorry I signed it."

Nobody coughed.

"I'm not going to ask to be forgiven tonight. I'd like to tell you what I know."

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He took out a thick fold of yellow cards held with a rubber band, and then another from the other side, and another, until he held a stack in both hands.

"Fourteen years of these went into this jacket," he said. "I never threw one away. I never read the back of one either, until Tuesday night."

He slid the band off the top card.

"June fifteenth. The day after our wedding. Two times seven equals what?"

His voice shook, and he waited.

"Fourteen. The fourteenth is the date of our wedding, and it took me till Tuesday to see it. On the back she wrote: Good morning, Mr. Harmon. Don't forget your jacket."

A woman in the balcony made a small noise.

"October, our sixth year. Dentist at three. I told you at breakfast. You said mm-hm."

He flipped the card.

"Your mother called twice. I told her you were working. You were not working, you were looking at the wall."

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