As the Roses Bloomed Beneath His Feet, I Buried Our Seven-Year Marriage. novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Table by the Window

Alister put Carina into his car and drove away before her husband could cross the street.

The man in the gray fleece watched them go.

Then he lowered his phone, looked both ways, and walked into the shop.

"I'm sorry," he said to Maeve. "Are you still open?"

"Not for him," Maeve said to me, and went to lock the front door behind the last customer.

He didn't seem to hear her.

He was about thirty-eight, with close-cropped brown hair and tired eyes, and he looked as if he'd slept in the fleece.

Deep blue irises were coming up through the floor around his feet.

They grew in clusters, straight and tall, and the longer I looked at him, the thicker they got.

He loved his wife.

Even now, after everything, he stood in a field of flowers for her.

I thought about how much that would hurt, and I forgot to be afraid of him.

"I'm Neil Maddox," he said. "Carina is my wife."

"I figured."

"You're Mrs. Hatherton."

"For about three more weeks," I said.

Something in his face eased a little.

"Can I sit down?"

Maeve brought him a chair and a cup of tea without being asked, and then she stood beside the register with her shears.

Briggs had gone to the back room to sit with his hands over his face. I could hear him not moving.

Neil wrapped both hands around the cup.

"Last week my wife told me she had a dinner with a colleague," he said. "She came home late and said he'd been called into surgery and she'd eaten alone."

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