After Ninety-Nine Lies, My Husband Finally Told Me the Truth novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Your Rule, Cora

The storm came in off the lake at nine that night.

I watched it from the window over the sink, a black wall of cloud over the water, and the first hard rain hit the roof.

Cliff called to say a tree was down on the county road and he'd be out until morning.

I told him I was fine.

I put the phone down and heard what I'd said.

At ten the porch light flickered, and I went to the door and opened it.

The truck was at the end of the road, where it always was, with its hood up.

Anders stood in front of it in the rain, working at the engine with a flashlight in his teeth.

A branch had come down across the cab, and the windshield was a white star.

He got in the cab, turned the key, and the truck gave one dry click.

Then he came up the gravel with the rain flattening his shirt to him, and he stopped at the bottom of my steps.

He did not climb them.

"Battery's dead and the glass is gone," he said. "I'll sit on the porch till it passes. I won't come in."

"It's going to rain all night."

"Your rule, Cora."

He said it quietly, and it was not a taunt.

He went up and sat on the far end of the porch, back against the wall, in the wet, with his arms on his knees.

I stood in the doorway and watched him shiver.

I had plenty of reasons to let him freeze, and every one of them was good.

"You looked at me," I said.

He lifted his head.

"At the dinner. While she read it out loud. You looked right at me and you let your face say it was true."

"I know."

"I stood there in front of your mother, and I looked for you, and you were gone. That's what I can't get past. The notebook I could forgive. The face I can't."

"I thought if I let you see me, she'd see it too."

"I know why. It doesn't help."

"It shouldn't," he said.

The rain came sideways under the roof and hit his boots.

"My turn," he said, hoarse. "You'll hate it."

"Say it."

"In five years you never once told me when you were hurt. You said you were fine. Your grandmother died, you were fine. My mother cut you at Christmas, you were fine. Signe took your keys in front of the whole yard, and you laughed and said it was nothing." His voice rose. "That was the lie that haunted me, Cora. Not the ninety-nine. That one. Every night."

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