Chapter 6: The Curb

I went out onto the porch with my phone held low and the recorder still running.

The shell road was dark except for the beam of her headlights and the yellow light over the steps.

"Say that again," I said. "What exactly did your mother tell you?"

"I don't know. I don't remember." Laney rubbed her face. "I can't think. I haven't eaten."

"You drove here drunk."

"I only had a few."

"You left a man in a ditch after a few."

She flinched, and her hand slid down the trunk of the oak.

"I stopped," she said. "Okay? I did stop. I got out."

"I know. He heard your heels."

"He was saying help. He kept saying help."

Her voice broke.

"I thought he was dying. I thought, if he's dying I'm going to prison."

"So you left."

"I called Mama from the car. She said to come home."

"She said to put the car in your garage and not to say anything to anybody."

"My garage."

"She said you'd handle it."

"Why would she say that?"

"I don't know. She just knew what to do." Laney started crying again. "She always knows what to do."

I held very still and kept the phone steady.

I had spent two years being kind to this woman.

I had held her hair back at a rehearsal dinner and driven her home from a party in the rain.

She stood in my grandmother's yard and said it plainly.

"Laney, give me your keys."

"No."

"Give me the keys. You can't drive."

"I'm only going home. I'm fine. I'm going to tell Mama you said no, and she'll fix it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Picked the Wrong Wife to Sacrifice for His Sister from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.