I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Eighty

Roxana told it plainly, standing in front of the frozen picture of the lawn.

"I was twenty-five at my engagement party," she said into the microphone. "He nodded across the lawn, and his friends picked me up.

"I was twenty-nine on his wedding day. This time, he nodded to me.

"I looked at him before I lifted the phone, and he gave me a small nod, and I did what I'd done for six years.

"That's what I'm sorry for. Della didn't deserve it, and I'm saying so to four hundred people.

"I'm done."

She set the microphone on its stand, and her hands, I saw, had finally started to shake.

Bennett had not moved from his spot at the center of the stage.

He was smiling, and it looked painful.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, wow. That's a lot of drama. Look, everyone, we had a rough summer, there's been a misunderstanding..."

He paused, the way he always did, for the laugh.

The tent was silent.

"Come on," he said, lighter. "It's a bit. It was always a bit. Somebody."

Nobody laughed.

In the middle rows, the woman in coral looked down at her lap.

A man near the aisle took off his name tag and put it in his pocket.

Bennett touched his right cuff link, and then his left one, and his hand shook.

I had not planned to climb the steps.

I only knew that if I let someone else speak next, it would be Bennett.

So I walked up in the pinned borrowed dress and took the microphone from the stand.

"Hello," I said. "I'm Della."

My voice sounded small in the speakers, and then it didn't.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Chose a New Life from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.