I Died In His Sick Game novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: Pettengill
On Monday morning I put on the only dress I owned.
Nan had bought it for me at the thrift store in Everglades City.
It was navy blue with white buttons and it was a size too big.
She stood back and looked at me in it.
"You look like a Sunday school teacher who could kill a man."
"Is that good?"
"In court? That's perfect."
Eli drove us to Naples in his truck. He wore a collared shirt that still had the fold lines from the package.
"You bought a shirt," I said.
"Nan bought a shirt."
"I bought a shirt," Nan agreed from the back seat. "He tried to wear one with a marlin on it."
"It was a nice marlin."
I laughed, and then I remembered where we were going, and stopped.
The lawyer met us on the courthouse steps.
She was a family lawyer from Fort Myers with gray hair and running shoes under her suit.
Nan had found her through a woman she sold crab to.
She'd looked at the photos of my arm on Friday and said she'd do it for nothing.
"Two things today," she said. "We file for divorce. And we ask the judge for emergency custody this afternoon. The hospital records are on our side. The nurse's notes are on our side."
"Is Bradley going to be here?"
"His lawyer will. He might."
Inside, a clerk slid the divorce petition across the counter and handed me a pen.
PETITIONER, it said, and a blank.
My hand hovered.
For eight years I'd signed Abby Thurlow on birthday cards and school forms and checks Bradley's accountant cleared.
The last thing I'd written with my hand was in my own blood, on a slate, and Kendra had wiped it away.
I wrote Abby Pettengill.
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