Sweetheart Wife novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Exhibit A

Jonas did not look at me.

He took his hand from my back and walked to the head of the table.

Delilah moved her chair aside for him.

He took a folded paper from his inside pocket.

It was a long white sheet, creased and soft along the folds, and it had been handled many times.

"Mrs. Habersham asked me to come tonight," he said. "She thought you ought to hear it from me."

I stood very still with the pearls in my fist.

"Seven years ago I was twenty-four," Jonas said. "I'd gone to a party on River Road with a friend of mine named Dale."

At the end of the table, Dale put down his fork.

"I'd had two beers at seven o'clock. At eleven I got in the passenger seat of his Jeep, because he said he'd drive me home."

Dale had gone the color of paper.

"That's the last thing I remember."

"The next thing I knew, it was on fire, and a girl was pulling me out of it by my collar."

He looked at me then, and for the first time I could read his face.

It was not anger.

It was something worse, a wound he had been carrying without ever setting it down.

"I woke up in a hospital in Charleston with third-degree burns," he said. "The police told me I'd been behind the wheel."

"I was in the passenger seat, and I told them."

"Nobody believed me, because I was the one in the driver's seat when the girl found me."

"And then they showed me this."

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