Reborn: This Time, I'm Divorcing Him First novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Yes

There was a pause on the line.

I heard traffic behind her, and a dog barking somewhere, and Camille breathing.

"Say that again," she said.

"I'll come to your hearing. I'll sign your statement. I'll say what you want me to say."

"In person."

"In person."

She let out a little laugh, soft and private.

"Saturday. Four o'clock. Lou's, on Second Avenue. The back booth." She paused. "You remember it."

"I remember it."

"Come alone. We'll go over your lines."

She hung up.

I put the phone face down on my blanket.

Ethan was standing at the foot of the bed.

He hadn't moved the whole call.

"You're going to say it," he said.

"I'm going to let her think so."

He looked at me for a long moment.

I watched him get there.

"She whispers when there's a phone near her," he said slowly. "She talks when she thinks she's won."

"She's never been surer than tonight."

"And if you get it?"

"Then she goes back inside."

"And her kidney goes with her."

"Yes."

He came and sat on the edge of the bed, carefully, on the side away from my line.

He put his face in his hands.

He stayed like that a long time.

"When she holds out her hand for your phone," he said into his palms, "what do you give her?"

"Mine."

"And what doesn't she know about?"

I reached over and touched the hospital phone on my tray table, the one that rings for pages.

He lifted his head.

His eyes were red, and the fight was gone out of them. Something steadier had come in instead.

"Then I'm driving you," he said. "And I'm parked outside the window."

On Saturday I went to Lou's in the scrubs they'd discharged me in.

St. Brigid's gives every attending a phone for pages and calls.

Mine was in the deep pocket on the right leg of my scrub pants.

It had been recording since I got out of Ethan's car.

Camille was in the back booth with a cup of black coffee.

Cream sweater. Jaw-length hair. A little gold watch.

She watched me walk the length of the diner.

"You look terrible," she said. "Sit."

I sat.

She held out her palm.

"Phone."

I took my own phone out of my coat and put it in her hand.

She switched it off and slid it under her saucer.

Then she looked at the pager on my waistband.

"That too."

I unclipped it and gave it to her.

She set it on top of the phone and smiled.

"Now we're friends."

The other phone lay against my thigh, warm and heavy.

I kept my hands on the table where she could see them.

She took an index card out of her purse and pushed it across to me.

The lines were typed. Four of them.

"Read it," she said.

"Here?"

"Here. Out loud. I want to hear how you sound."

I read it.

"I was wrong about Camille Hollister. She was a lonely woman used by a man she trusted."

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