She Played Daughter-in-Law on a Pig Farm, So I Took Her Hospital novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Husband at the Pig Roast

He crashes the roast in person; Veronica calls him a patient; a man collapses and she does not move.

The Frawley farm sat at the end of a dirt road, and I could smell the smoke from the highway.

There were thirty trucks parked along the fence and a hand-painted sign nailed to a post.

HOLIDAY ROAST. EVERYBODY WELCOME.

I parked at the end of the line and walked in with my hands empty.

Nobody stopped me.

A fire barrel burned in the yard, and about forty people stood around it with paper plates and plastic cups.

Children ran between the legs of the grown-ups.

A radio on a hay bale played country Christmas songs.

Over by the barn, two men were turning a pig on a spit.

I did not see my wife at first, because she was not dressed like my wife.

Veronica stood at a steel table beside the barn door with a knife in her hand and an apron on that had once been white.

She was cutting a second pig into pieces, fast and clean, and a girl of about ten was watching her with open admiration.

"Aunt Veronica is a real surgeon," the girl told her friend. "She can cut anything."

My wife smiled and did not correct her.

I walked straight across the yard.

Cody saw me first.

He was carrying a tray of rolls, and when he stopped, a roll rolled off the edge and into the dirt.

"Mr. Hallett," he said, very quietly. "What are you doing here?"

"I came for the roast," I said.

Veronica looked up.

Her face did not change for about a second, and then it went flat and polite.

"Nolan," she said. "You drove all this way."

"You said you were stuck at work."

The conversation around the fire barrel had slowed.

A man with a gray beard and a seed-company cap came across the yard wiping his hands on a rag.

He was the one from the profile picture, and he held out a hand to me anyway.

"Dale Frawley," he said. "Cody's father. And you are?"

"Nolan Hallett," I said. "Veronica's husband."

It was not loud, but it traveled.

Dale's hand stayed where it was for a moment.

Then he looked at Veronica.

"He's confused," she said quickly. She wiped her hands on the apron and left a red smear across it. "Dale, I'm so sorry. He's a patient of mine. He's been following me around the hospital for months."

I looked at her.

I had been married to her for nine years, and I had never once seen her lie to a stranger.

It was very good.

Her voice was steady and soft, the voice of a woman who handled men like me every day.

"He gets these ideas," she said, to the crowd and not to me. "I should have called security."

"Veronica," said the girl's mother, from beside the fire. "You told us your husband died."

"That's why he's so sad," Veronica said.

Somebody laughed in a small, uncertain way.

I took out my phone.

I pulled up the photo from our wedding and turned the screen so Dale could see it.

Veronica in white, me in a gray suit, her father's old pickup behind us with cans tied to the bumper.

Then I held up my left hand.

The gold band on it had a groove worn into the metal from nine years of scrubbing in.

"Look at her hand," I said.

Dale looked.

Her left ring finger was bare, but there was a pale stripe on it where the ring had been.

It had not been off for long.

"Dale," Veronica said.

"Where's your ring, Veronica?" the girl's mother asked.

"I take it off to work."

"With a pig?" said somebody else.

Cody had put the rolls down on a hay bale.

"Dad," he said. "Can we talk inside?"

"No," Dale said, very evenly. "We can talk out here."

I turned to Cody.

"I knew," I said.

He went white under the freckles.

"I've known for a month," I said. "I saw your texts on the shared tablet. I waited, because I wanted her to be the one to end it."

Nobody around the barrel was eating anymore.

Veronica took a step toward me, and her hand tightened on the knife.

"You waited," she said between her teeth. "You sat in my house for a month and watched."

"I sat in my house," I said.

"Put the knife down, Veronica," Dale said.

She did not.

"I'm a surgeon," she said, to him, loudly, in her hospital voice. "I run an entire hospital, and he is trying to ruin me in front of your family."

"Then you wouldn't mind telling them where you trained," I said.

She opened her mouth.

On the far side of the fire barrel, a heavy man in a canvas coat said, "Dale?"

He said it in an odd flat voice.

He put one hand against his chest.

Then he went down on his knees in the dirt and fell on his face.

Dale spun around.

"Somebody's down!" he shouted, and then, to my wife, "Doc Veronica! Get over here, he's down!"

Veronica did not move.

She stood by the steel table with the knife in her hand and her mouth half open, and she did not take one step.

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