His Cousin Was His Real Wife, So I Took My Father's Name Back novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Kitchen Table
Clara's POV
Brooke ate three pieces of toast and then told me everything.
She sat at the kitchen table on Wren Hill with her feet on a second chair and her hands around a mug.
"I'm not a good person," she said first. "I want you to know that before I start."
"Start."
"Joan came to me the winter before the wedding. I'd just been dumped. I was living in my car."
She stared into the mug.
"She said she had a way for me to have a husband and a roof and a family, and all I had to do was keep quiet and be a cousin."
"A husband on paper."
"Kyle and I went to the county on a Tuesday and got the license. We came out married." Her mouth twisted. "Joan took me to lunch afterward. She said, now there's a real one, and a show one, and the show one will pay for everything."
"The show one was me."
"I'm sorry, Clara."
"I know you are," I said. "You sat in my chair for eleven months and you looked sick every Sunday."
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
"I thought I could stand it until the baby," she said. "Then this morning I heard Kyle tell Joan on the phone that once you signed, I'd be a cousin again. And the baby would be somebody else's."
She looked up.
"They were going to take my name off it, too."
Simon, standing at the counter, said in a very quiet voice, "Will you say that to a police detective?"
"Yes."
"Will you say it to Kyle, with a phone running?"
Brooke looked at me.
"He's got nothing left," she said. "Not since the bank. He'll tell me anything if he thinks I'm still his."
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