The Mistress in the Room novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: The Witness
Evan's shed smelled of cedar shavings, diesel and hot coffee.
It sat at the end of a gravel lot at the marina, with a boat up on stands outside and a wall of hanging tools inside.
I had asked him to bring me somewhere that wasn't a house or a car.
He brought me here, and I put Douglas's black phone on his workbench.
Lydia had let me take it.
"Photograph what you need," she had said at her door. "Then keep it somewhere he can't reach. I'll stand up in any room you pick."
"Why?" I'd asked.
"Because I want to say it where he has to listen."
Now Evan read the thread standing up, his reading glasses low on his nose.
He read to the last message.
Then he put the phone down very gently and stared at the pegboard.
"Fran will believe me," he said. "She always does."
"That's what he wrote."
"I know it's what he wrote."
He turned his head, and his face was set hard.
"He said that about you before," he said. "Eleven years ago, at our father's funeral."
I waited.
"I was in the coat room. He was on his phone, in the next room, with a woman. Not Lydia. Somebody before her." He rubbed his thumb along his jaw. "I told him he had a week to tell you, or I would."
"And?"
"He told you I'd taken Dad's watch out of the casket and sold it."
My hands went cold.
"He said you were drunk," I said slowly. "He said you stood in the church aisle and swore at your mother's memory."
"I swore at him."
"I never heard it. I only heard him."
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