Husband Faked His Death and Left Me, Now He Regrets It, Sorry, You Can Only Repent at My Grave novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Who Told You

Geneva says Beth told her they were dead. Beth denies it softly and warns her no one will believe a sick woman. Stewart asks if she was told he was dead too.

The kitchen smelled like coffee and burnt sugar, the way it always had.

Beth sat me down at the table, in my old chair by the window.

Through the glass I could see the yard emptying.

The pastor was herding the neighbors toward their cars with a hand on each back.

Stewart stood by the porch rail with the little girl asleep on his shoulder, not moving at all.

My mother came in from the hall and stopped three feet from me.

She had both hands over her mouth.

"Genny," she said through her fingers. "Genny, is it you?"

"It's me, Mom."

She crossed the floor in two steps and took my face in her hands.

Her palms were rough and warm, and they shook.

She touched my cheeks, my hair, the collar of my coat.

I let her.

I didn't know how not to.

My father stayed by the stove with his arms hanging.

"Where were you?" he asked. His voice cracked in the middle. "Three years, Geneva. Where were you?"

"Where was I?" I said. "Dad, I was in Arizona. Where were you?"

He looked at my mother.

"We were here," my mother said. "We were right here. We held a service for you at St. Brendan's. Your father dragged that river every morning for six weeks, until the sheriff made him stop."

"A service for me."

"We had an urn at the church," my father said. "It was empty. Stewart carried an empty box down the aisle, because I couldn't."

He said it flatly, to the floor.

The kitchen was very quiet.

I looked at my mother's white hair, and at my father's hands, and I felt something in my chest shift, not a lot, just enough to be dangerous.

"Beth told me you were dead," I said.

The kettle clicked off behind us.

Beth had been pouring water into a mug.

She set the kettle down on the burner.

"What?" she said.

"At Riverview Medical," I said. "I woke up in a bed with a Jane Doe bracelet on my wrist and nine days of nothing, and you came into the room in your blue unit clerk jacket. You sat on the edge of the mattress."

Beth didn't move.

"You said Mom and Dad and Stewart were dead," I said. "You said the funerals were over and the whole town blamed me for driving. You said don't come home."

"Geneva," my mother whispered.

Beth's eyes filled.

It happened fast and it looked real.

"Honey," she said. "I never saw you. I swear on this house, I never saw you."

"You sat on my bed."

"I worked at Riverview, yes. Back then, I did." She pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth. "If I'd seen you alive, I would have run all the way here. I would have called the whole county."

My father pulled out the chair across from me and sat down heavily.

"Geneva," he said, carefully. "You have been sick."

"I know I've been sick."

"People who are very sick, who have a lot of medicine in them, they get things mixed up. Doctors say that."

"Dad."

"I'm only saying it could be a dream. A bad one."

I stared at him.

Three years I had carried that room, the bracelet, Beth's cold hands on mine.

"I didn't dream the checks," I said.

"What checks?" my mother asked.

"Cashier's checks. A year of them. Every month. 'From Dad's life insurance,' she wrote on the card, so I'd take them and stay away."

Beth took a slow breath.

"Mom, Dad," she said. "Can I have a minute alone with my sister?"

My mother looked at me, then at Beth, and I saw it in her face, the way she wanted both of us to be telling the truth.

She took my father by the sleeve and led him out into the hall.

The door swung nearly shut.

Beth came around the table and sat in the chair across from mine.

She wasn't crying anymore.

She folded her hands on the table and looked at me with the same gentle, wide-eyed face she'd had at the gate.

"Geneva," she said, in a voice only I could hear. "I'm going to be very kind to you. Because you're sick, and because I love you."

"Don't."

"They've spent three years learning to breathe without you. Mom stopped having the dreams last winter. Dad finally goes to the mill reunion."

"What do you want, Beth?"

"I want you to think about who anyone here is going to believe." She smiled a little. "A woman who left for three years and shows up in a coat, telling stories about a hospital. Or the one who stayed and buried you."

I couldn't speak.

"Nobody is going to believe a sick woman, Geneva. Take a week. Take whatever you need. Then go back to Arizona and let them stay happy."

She stood and smoothed her cardigan.

When she opened the door to the hall, her face had changed back to the soft one.

Someone was standing in the doorway with the sleeping child in his arms.

Stewart had been listening.

His face was white to the lips.

He stood there with his daughter's head on his shoulder and his eyes on mine, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse.

"Geneva," he said. "Did she tell you I was dead too?"

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