Chapter 5: Fourteen Months of Practice

Imogen was waiting for me in the window booth of the Harlow Diner with two coffees and a legal pad.

She had checked into the inn down the road the night before and refused to leave town.

"Eat," she said, and pushed a plate of eggs at me.

"I'm not hungry."

"Your hand is shaking. Eat."

I ate.

She watched me with her sharp blue eyes while I did.

"I've published thirty-one women," Imogen said. "Four of them married worse."

"That's supposed to help?"

"It's supposed to make you laugh. Did it?"

"A little."

"Good. Now tell me what you want, because you're about to be offered a lot of things you don't."

I put down my fork.

"I want to know if it's real," I said.

"If what's real?"

"If they love me. Or if they love each other, and I'm the thing they can't bear to lose."

"Then watch them," said Imogen. "Don't ask. Watch."

She tore a page off the legal pad and slid it across.

It said, in her small square handwriting: Library reading, Sunday, 6 p.m. Sold out.

"Philippa's friends bought a block of tickets," she said. "I heard it from the box office. Wear something red."

"Why red?"

"Because you're going to want to be looked at."

I drove home with the page folded in my pocket.

Declan and Roz were in the living room, one at each end of the couch, with a whole cushion of daylight between them.

They looked like two people waiting at a clinic.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Cheated With My Best Friend, So I Took Them Both from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.