Not His Wife novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Wine

"She wants you to know she sees you," I said.

"Yes," Anson said. "She always did like an audience."

I opened the text again.

A second one came in under it before I could answer.

"Ivy, can I come by? I need to tell you something and I can't say it on the phone. I'm so scared."

I stared at the screen.

"She's got Reed in her kitchen and a baby on his knee," I said. "And she's scared."

"She's getting ahead of it," Anson said. "She knows I'm here. She wants to be the first one in the room."

"Then let her be."

I wrote back, "Come. I'll be home."

We drove to Linden Road in the dark with the heater on and did not talk.

Reed's side of the garage was empty, and mine held my car and a stack of paint cans from a job he had never finished.

I let Anson in through the side door.

I did not turn on the kitchen light.

We stood at opposite ends of my mother's table in the blue glow from the streetlamp, and the refrigerator hummed between us.

"You can hide in the garage," I said. "There's a door with a crack in it. You'll hear everything."

"All right."

"Don't come out unless I say so."

"Ivy."

"What?"

He had moved without my noticing.

He was a step away from me now, close enough that I could smell the rain in his coat.

I could see his face, the dark brows and the tired lines at the corners of his eyes and the grey in his hair.

He was not touching me.

He was holding himself back so carefully that I could feel it.

"You're shivering," he said.

"I'm angry."

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