Back to the 80s novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: His Wife

I put the bracelet on the kitchen table in front of him that night, after the children were asleep.

Russell turned it over with one finger.

He read it twice.

"Baby Girl A," he said. "There's a B."

"I think there is."

"Vivian's the B."

"I think so."

His voice was very even.

"And went back for you at four."

"As a spare."

He pushed back from the table and came around it.

He crouched in front of my chair, his big hands on my knees, and looked up at me.

"I'm going to say one thing," he said, "and then I'm going to take you upstairs."

"I don't care who you were born to. I don't care whose name is on your papers."

"You're the best thing that ever walked in my door."

My throat closed.

There was something else I'd been carrying, and it was heavier than the bracelet.

"Russell. I need to tell you something strange."

"Then tell me strange."

"I'm not who this town thinks I am."

"You're an Ellacombe."

"I was someone else, before this. I was twenty-nine. I worked at a bank."

"I died on a road in the dark, and then I woke up in this house, in this body, in this year."

He didn't laugh.

He didn't move.

"That's why I could read your father," I said. "That's why I'm not afraid of them."

"I don't know how it happened, and I don't know if it's going to unhappen."

He looked at me for a long time.

"I don't understand it," he said at last.

"I'm not asking you to."

"I don't have to understand it. I have a wife who told me the truth when it would've been easier to lie."

He stood, took my hand, and pulled me to my feet.

"Whoever you were," he said, "you're mine now. Come upstairs."

In his room, with the lamp on and the door locked, he undressed me slowly.

Not like the wedding night, or the kitchen.

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