Chapter 11: Sixty Years

On Friday at five, Colin texted me an address I already knew.

"Mom's. Seven o'clock. She's invited the whole book club. Please come. I'm going to say something and I want you in the room."

I read it twice in the elevator.

Fran, beside me, read it over my shoulder and sniffed.

"A trap," she said.

"Or a first."

"I'll drive."

The Coughlin house stood in Squirrel Hill behind a cut-glass door and a boxwood hedge trimmed by a man who came on Tuesdays.

Eight women sat in the dining room around a roast, and the table was laid for ten.

Maureen sat at the head, in pearls, and she stiffened when she saw me in the doorway.

"Colin," she said. "You didn't mention guests."

"I mentioned that I'd have something to say," he said.

He stood at the end of the table in his shirtsleeves, holding the back of a chair.

He looked pale and strangely calm.

"Mother, sit," he said gently, because she had half-risen. "This won't take long."

"Colin, this is my house."

"It was mine for eighteen years."

He turned to the room.

"Ladies, I'm sorry to interrupt dinner. My wife is here, and I want you to hear this."

Eight faces turned toward me.

I stood very still.

"Mother," Colin said, "I stood beside you that night and said nothing."

He took a breath.

"That's mine. I'll carry that."

"But I'm done carrying yours. You paid Peyton's plane ticket. And you told me for two years that Selah had trapped me, and none of it was true."

A woman near the roast set down her fork very carefully.

"I was protecting you," Maureen said, and her voice shook for the first time. "You're my son. That girl lied to you from the start."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Regrets Divorcing Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.