Apocalypse: I Hear My Genius Husband's Sins novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: The Night Before

Jonas's POV

The night before the hearing, Ames put us back in the east cottage and posted two guards on the porch.

He took my knife, my radio and my hatchet.

He left me the one thing I would have taken myself, which was the room with her in it.

Nina lay on the narrow bed with the black ledger under her pillow and her back to the wall.

She had not said a word since supper.

I sat on the floor by the door with my knees up and listened to the camp settling outside.

A bugle, far off.

Boots.

Then the kind of quiet that comes before a thing breaks.

"You're not sleeping," she said.

"No."

"What are you thinking about?"

"The roof."

She turned over.

The lamp was low, and I could see her eyes, steady and brown, watching me.

"Which part?"

"All of it."

I had run through it a hundred times since the ward.

The order on the General's desk.

The stairwell door.

Her husband's hand on her wrist, and the sound she had made when she pulled free.

Every one of those moments had a truth in it that I had not said.

"Nina."

"Yes."

"I haven't told you everything."

"I know. You said so in the motel."

"I want to tell you the rest tonight."

She was quiet for a while.

She sat up slowly with the blanket around her shoulders.

"Is it about the roof?"

"Yes."

"Is it about the General?"

"Yes."

Her hand tightened on the blanket.

I could see her working it through.

She did not ask me what it was.

She asked a different question.

"Will it change what I do tomorrow?"

"Yes," I said.

I did not lie.

I had never learned how.

She looked at me for a long time.

"Then don't tell me tonight."

"Nina..."

"Tomorrow I'm standing in front of three hundred people with a ledger and a strip of paper. I need to be able to walk up there without a hole in the floor." She swallowed. "Tell me after. I mean it. After, you can tell me anything, and I'll listen."

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