In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: Down the Creek

Kacey took her hand off the safe door.

She didn't look at me. Not once. She looked straight at Noreen.

"It was open," she said. "I was walking by. I was going to shut it."

"Liar."

Noreen bent and snatched up the unlabeled folder from the floor.

Her fingers went through it twice, three times, faster each time.

I watched her look for the tracing sheet and not find it.

I watched her understand she couldn't say what it was.

"You've been in my papers," Noreen said.

"You've been in my phone every morning for a month," Kacey said. "I figured it was a family thing."

Somebody in the hall laughed and choked it off.

Noreen's hand came up.

Kacey didn't flinch.

Noreen held it there in the air, shaking, with twenty witnesses in the door.

Then she brought it down slowly and held it out flat instead.

"Phone."

Kacey gave her the phone.

"Coy," Noreen said. "Your wife is unwell. Take her upstairs."

Coy stood in the doorway beside me.

He looked at his mother. He looked at Kacey.

For one second I thought he might say no.

"Mother," he said. "She's..."

"Upstairs."

He went and took Kacey by the arm.

She shook him off and walked out ahead of him with her chin up, past me, past all of them.

By dark there was a steel hasp screwed into the outside of the bride's room door, with a padlock on it.

Two of Coy's boys sat on hard chairs in the hall.

Noreen kept the key on a chain around her neck.

At supper she wore the chain over her collar.

"Kacey's resting," she told the table. "Wedding nerves. It happens."

She put her hand over mine on the tablecloth.

"Shiloh understands," she said. "Don't you, dear."

I let her hand stay there.

I'd held my wolf down on top of a cow on the rim. I could hold her down through one roast.

"I understand," I said.

I sent Rance one text that night from the guest room, under the quilt.

She's locked in. Tomorrow night. One o'clock. The crossing below the old ford. Bring a blanket and stay out of the creek.

He texted back:

There.

I spent Wednesday in the horse barn.

At noon the foreman came and leaned on Tonka's stall door beside me.

"Bride's window looks out over the back porch roof," he said, to nobody. "Porch post on the north end's got a good solid brace on it. Always thought a person could climb down it if they had a mind."

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