On Halloween, My Husband Chose Her Family Over Ours novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Thirty-Eight Thousand
On Wednesday evening Derek came to dinner with a bunch of grocery-store tulips.
The order said he could.
I stood in the doorway with my arms folded over my stomach while he held the flowers out, and I did not take them.
"Put them in the sink," I said. "Maddie's at the table."
He had not shaved.
His suit jacket hung open, and his tie was gone, and he looked at the floor as he came in.
"I lost the job," he said.
"When?"
"Monday. The benefits form. They said adding someone who isn't a dependent is fraud, and they can't have it on the floor." He put the tulips in the sink and ran water over the stems. "I signed it in September, because Colleen said the test was a formality. I wanted Lily covered."
"You wanted to look like a father."
"Yes."
He said it so plainly that I had nothing to say back.
Maddie sat at the table with a plate of noodles in front of her and her sketchbook closed beside it.
She did not look up when he came in.
He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down slowly.
"Hi, kiddo."
"Hi."
"I brought flowers for Mom."
"She didn't take them."
"No."
I set a plate in front of him, and I sat at the end of the table with my hand on the back of Maddie's chair.
The kitchen was quiet except for the fork scraping her plate.
"Maddie," Derek said. "I have to tell you something, and I want to say it right."
She stopped eating.
"A few weeks ago I told you that you'd go live at Lily's house. That was wrong. I shouldn't have said it, and I shouldn't have asked you to keep it from Mom. You didn't do anything. None of this was about you."
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