The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: No
I said it on the eighth day, in the dark, with the lamp off.
We had lain beside each other every night since Rocco's room, and he had not touched me since he kissed my forehead.
He lay on his back with his hands folded on his chest, like a man at a wake.
I had not asked him to.
I had taken it for a courtesy.
I lay on my side watching the ceiling fan, and the sentence I had carried for a week finally came apart in my mouth.
"I can't stay," I said.
His whole body went still.
"What?" he said.
"I can't stay in this house, Nico."
"Ines."
"Not you," I said.
"The house."
He sat up and turned on the lamp.
I saw his face, and for the first time I understood that his courtesy was a cell he had built and lived in.
"Say it," he said.
"Say all of it."
I sat up against the headboard with the sheet drawn to my chin.
"Your family buried my husband in a box," I said.
"Your mother knew something was wrong and didn't ask.
"Your wife wrote a letter that put him in the ground, and your friend carried it out."
Nico did not move.
"Every woman in that kitchen has handed me a rag and a cannoli shell and said nothing for six weeks," I said.
"They knew he had a wife, and they let me find out about his life from a program on a church table."
"I didn't know," he said.
"I know you didn't."
"I didn't know," he said again, hoarsely.
"And you buried him without telling a soul he had a wife," I said.
My voice cracked on it.
"No one looked for me.
"I was seven weeks pregnant.
"By the time I learned he was dead, a man I had known for eight months was already in the ground, in a box I never saw.
"For the first three days I thought he had left me."
"Ines," he said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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