My Fiancé Kissed My Sister at Our Engagement Party and Told Everyone She Threw Herself at Him, So I Believed My Sister and Left With Her novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Through the Glass

Hannah records Brandon through his car window as he offers her a way out, threatens Maddie and tells her to ask her mother about April; then Linda orders them both to church.

I told Maddie to stay inside and lock the door.

Then I went down the walk in my party shoes with my phone in my hand and the voice recorder already running.

I held it low against my dress.

The Equinox window slid down before I got there.

Brandon had loosened his tie.

He looked tired and sorry and good-looking, which is how he looks when he wants something.

"Han," he said. "Thank God. I didn't want to knock."

"You're parked in front of my sister's house."

"I'm parked on a public street." He gave me his small smile. "I wanted to make sure you were okay. You left so fast."

"I'm fine."

"You're not. You're in shock. Hon, listen."

He leaned toward the window.

"Your mom's called my mom six times. We're not mad. Nobody's mad. Tomorrow you go to church, you say you misread it, Maddie says she's sorry, and we laugh about it at the shower."

"Maddie's not saying she's sorry."

"She will." He said it gently, as if it were weather. "She's not well, Han. You've seen it. The headaches, the leaving early. Your mom is worried sick."

"Is she?"

"Ask anyone."

He took a breath and let his eyes go to the house.

"Did she play you anything tonight?"

There it was.

I kept my face the way I keep it when a boy tells me the dog ate his reading log.

"Play me what?"

"She records people. It's part of what's going on with her." He shook his head, sad. "She edits them. Cuts them up so they sound like whatever she needs. I'd hate for you to hear something and think it was real."

"Why would I hear something?"

"I'm just saying."

A second hand ticked in my head, the one from the coat-room clock.

He had not asked whether she was safe.

He had not asked how she was.

He had asked what she'd played.

"Brandon," I said. "Say that again. About her editing things."

He blinked.

Then he smiled, wider, and I saw him change his mind about me.

"You know what? You're upset. I get it."

He put one hand on the door of the car.

"But I'll say one thing and then I'll go. Who's going to believe her, Han?"

I didn't answer.

"Your mother doesn't. My mother doesn't. Sixty people saw her hanging on me. She's a girl who got dumped by the guy from Stevens Point and moved back into a rental and works a front desk. I'm the Meyer Agency."

He said the last part with real affection for himself.

"You'd be doing her a kindness," he said. "You'd be giving her a way out."

A porch light came on two houses down.

An old man in a plaid robe stepped out with a small white dog.

He stood on his top step and did not pretend to be doing anything else.

He was the retired mail carrier who had delivered our mail when I was seven.

"Everything all right down there, Hannah?"

"Yes, thank you," I called. "He's leaving."

Brandon glanced at the porch.

Then back at me.

His voice dropped to the one I'd heard him use on waiters.

"Ask your mother what she knew in April."

He put the car in gear.

"Go to church tomorrow, Han. Save everybody the trouble."

The Equinox pulled away from the curb without hurrying and turned onto Main.

The man on the porch waited until the taillights were gone.

"That boy always did park too close," he said, and went inside with his dog.

I stood on the sidewalk for a while.

My thumb found the stop button on my phone.

The file was two minutes and fifty seconds long, and I saved it twice.

My phone lit up in my hand.

It was Mom.

The text was short, which in my mother is a bad sign.

"I told Dee you'll both be at church at ten to apologize. Don't embarrass me twice."

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