Chapter 12: Eleven O'Clock

Belinda stood in the middle of Dalton's office with her suitcase and her sleeping son, and she waited for me to leave.

I took my time.

I picked up the lab report, folded it along its old creases, and put it into Dalton's hand.

"This was one of your twelve events," I told him. "The rest are yours to attend with her."

"Monica."

"The term said it doesn't change anything. I said it myself."

"Don't," he said. "Please don't walk out on this."

"You had three years to say it to me, and you said it tonight with her standing in your office."

Belinda's face stayed soft and sorry.

"Monica, I never meant for any of this," she said. "He needed me. We both needed each other."

"You read my text on the way to the side door," I said.

She blinked.

"You wrote it, and the assistant sent it. 'She went to the side door like you said.' I saw your screen."

For half a second, her smile was only a shape.

"I'm not sure what you think you saw," she said.

"I think I'll see it again," I said, and I went out.

Nobody followed me, and I was grateful and furious about both.

I slept at my mother's, in the room I'd had at sixteen, under a poster of a periodic table.

At six the next morning I came downstairs and found her at the stove making oatmeal.

Ruby was at the table with her laptop open and her curls in a clip.

"Sit," my mother said. "Eat. Then tell me what happened, and I'll pretend I haven't been up all night."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Sent Me Away for Three Years. Now My Divorce Has Him Panicking. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.