Divorced, Broke, and Back as His Perfect Wife novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What Gail Kept

I sat at Gail's kitchen table with the letter flat in front of me until I heard her key.

She came in with her choir folder under one arm and a paper bag from the bakery in her hand.

"Sweetheart, you found the pie."

Then she saw the cream envelope beside my plate, and the bag went down on the counter.

"I wasn't snooping," I said. "I was looking for the chicken and rice."

"I know you weren't."

She took off her coat slowly. She hung it on its hook, and she smoothed the collar before she turned around.

"My husband told me you'd find it by accident," she said. "He said you'd never go looking."

It was the first time she had said his name in my hearing in three years.

"How long have you known what's in it?"

"Since the week he died. The lawyer read it to me in this kitchen."

"Three years," I said.

"Yes."

"I waited tables, Gail. I added up tips on the bus. My mother's bills were thirty-eight thousand dollars, and you let me sit up at night doing that arithmetic."

"I paid what I could without you finding out."

"That's not the same as telling me."

Her hand went to her brooch.

"No," she said. "It isn't."

She sat down across from me, in the chair that had been Brennan's when he was twelve.

"He made me promise two things. I would never tell Brennan, and I would never tell you unless Brennan was standing beside you."

"Why?"

"Because if Brennan knew there was thirty million dollars waiting on a wedding, he would have married you the next morning. And you would never have known whether he meant it."

I had no answer to that.

"My husband wanted Brennan to choose you with nothing on the table," she said. "He was sure Brennan would, one day. I wasn't sure at all. When he left you for that girl I wanted to drive over there and burn his car."

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