In Sickness and in Lies novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Unit 214

Bruce's POV

I get blunt when I'm worried, and by Monday evening I was very blunt.

"You should not go in there alone," I told her in the parking lot of Lakeside Storage.

"I'm not alone. You drove."

"I'm saying a stranger gave you a key."

"A stranger who is sleeping with my husband."

"That's not the reassurance you think it is."

She almost laughed.

It was the first near-laugh I'd seen out of her since the dinner, and I filed it somewhere I had no business filing things.

My ex-wife used to say I could give a death sentence in the voice of a weather report.

She left in March of our fourth year, and she was right.

I'm better at the truth than at the delivery.

Gwyneth walked ahead of me down the cold corridor, counting doors.

Unit 214 had a padlock that took the brass key on the first try.

She hauled the rolling door up, and a smell of dust and machine oil came out.

There were twenty-odd boxes against the back wall, stacked three high.

Every one had a label in square capital letters: TOOLS. SHIRTS. WINTER. PAPERS. GWYN.

She stood in the doorway and didn't go in.

"That's his handwriting," she said.

"Take your time."

"Don't be gentle. I'll fall apart."

"I'm not good at gentle anyway."

She went in.

She opened SHIRTS first and put her face down into the flannel for a moment.

I looked at the ceiling.

Then she turned to the shelf behind the boxes, where a framed photograph sat propped against the wall.

It was a man in coveralls with a small girl on his shoulders.

She lifted it, and the glass, cracked across the corner, split the rest of the way and slid.

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