The Taste of My Husband's Brother (A Wife's Revenge) novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: No More Secrets

The whole parking lot had gone quiet.

The man in the polo shirt was already walking away.

Etienne folded the papers in half, then in half again, and put them in his back pocket.

"Half," I said.

"Half my twenty-four."

"That's twelve percent, Etienne. She'll sell it to Luc the day she gets it."

"I know."

"Then he's got thirty-six. He only needs Mémère to sign, and now he's got a cushion if she ever doesn't."

"I can count, Josette."

He said it gently.

Then he picked up my empty crate and carried it to the van, and the gumbo line started moving again behind us, and half the island pretended they hadn't heard a thing.

I drove out to the camp after dark.

I didn't call first.

The storm had taken all the screens off his porch, so the camp sat open to the marsh.

He was on the top step with a beer he wasn't drinking, the same way he'd sat at the boil on Red Day.

His boat rocked at the dock below him.

He watched my headlights come down the shell road.

He didn't get up.

I sat down on the step beside him.

Not close.

Close enough.

"You okay?" I said.

"I'm a man getting divorced by his wife so she can move in with his brother." He turned the bottle in his hands. "I'm great."

"Me too."

He laughed, a little.

The frogs were loud.

Somewhere out in the dark, a gator slapped the water.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Rule one."

"In the pepper row. When you kissed me." He looked at the bottle, not at me. "Was that for him? To get back at him?"

I thought about lying.

I didn't.

"Yes," I said. "In the row, yes. I wanted to put my mouth on something of his and break it."

He nodded slowly.

"And the boat?"

"The boat wasn't."

"The hallway?"

"The hallway was me," I said. "Just me. Nobody else was in that hallway."

He set the bottle down on the step.

"Then what is this, Josette? Because I'm too old to be anybody's revenge, and I'm too tired to be anybody's secret."

I looked at him.

At his big sunburned hands, the beard, the crease at his eyes from squinting at fields his whole life.

"I don't know what it is yet," I said. "I know I don't want to sneak. I spent seven years being a good wife in a house where everybody was lying. I'm done with dark hallways and parking lots."

"So?"

"So if I come in that door tonight, I'm coming in it on purpose. Lights on. And tomorrow I'm not going to pretend I didn't."

He was quiet for a long time.

"Even with what people will say?"

"They're going to say it anyway. Lise says the shipping clerk already told the priest."

That got a real laugh out of him.

"No more secrets," I said. "Anything else you haven't told me, tell me now."

He looked at the water.

A long time.

Longer than the night of the pact.

"I'm not proud of everything I've done this year," he said finally.

"Me neither. I lied to my husband's face on a staircase."

"That's not what I mean." He stopped.

"Etienne."

"Ask me in daylight," he said. "I'll answer anything you ask me in daylight. I swear it."

"It's a deal."

He turned and looked at me then, all the way.

"Stay."

"Say it again," I said, "and I won't go home."

He stood up and held out his hand.

I took it.

He walked me up the step and through the door of the camp, and he turned on the light.

He walked me inside and let go of my hand.

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