I Died the Day My Husband's Girlfriend Did a Magic Trick novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Smile Dropped

For a long moment nobody in the Rialto moved.

Then Imogen lunged for my son.

She was fast, and she was a performer, and she nearly had him by the sleeve.

But Abel came down the aisle at a run and over the rail, and he landed on the boards between her and Linus.

"Not this time," Abel said.

He didn't touch her.

He simply stood there, tall and black-jacketed, and she stopped.

I pulled Linus against my hip, and he put his arm around my waist and held on.

Imogen turned in a slow circle, looking for a way out.

What she found instead was the house.

Four hundred people were staring up at her from the dark.

She did the only thing she had ever known how to do.

She smiled.

It was the smile I knew, wide and bright, the one she had worn all through my death.

She lifted both arms like a woman taking a bow.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, in a voice that carried without a microphone. "I'm afraid my friend has had an episode. If you'll just give me a hand..."

She waited.

Nobody clapped.

Nobody moved a finger.

I heard the old seats creak and a child cough in the balcony, and the electric hum of the lights.

It went on for five seconds, then ten.

The smile stayed on her face a beat longer than it should have.

Then, very slowly, it slid off.

What was under it was a woman of thirty-two, afraid and alone, with her hands still in the air.

"Imogen Rask," said the chief of police, from the foot of the stage.

He climbed the steps with his hat in his fist and his face gray.

He had a photograph of her on his office wall.

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