My Cowboy Husband Neglected Me Ignored Our Baby for Another Woman's novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Show Me the Receipts

Lottie let go of the microphone, because three hundred people were watching and she could not afford to be seen holding on.

I tapped it once.

"Hello, Sweetgrass County," I said. "I'm Hattie Tillman. I'm the one who left the party."

Somebody in the back said, "We know, honey."

A few people laughed, and it helped.

"Eighteen hundred dollars, on the first of the month," I said. "Yes. I read the ledger myself three weeks ago. I'm his wife, and I've seen every page."

Lottie looked at me with her mouth slightly open.

She hadn't expected me to say it.

"My husband made a promise to a man he loves like a brother. The money is for a child's needs, and that man can't pay it himself right now. He's coming home soon, and then you can all meet him."

"Whose child?" a man shouted from the middle.

"A little girl who didn't ask for any of this," I said. "I'm not going to hang her name on a fairground stage."

I turned and looked at Lottie.

"But I'd like to see where eighteen hundred dollars a month went. The dentist, the preschool, the doctor in Billings. I'm sure you have the receipts, Lottie."

Lottie said nothing.

The silence stretched until someone near the front said, "Well, Lottie?"

"I don't have to answer to this," she said.

"No," I said. "But you posted your whole life, and we all saw the truck."

She walked down off the stage with her chin up and Birdie on her hip.

The crowd moved aside to let her through.

Nobody clapped, and nobody spoke.

At the edge of the grass her sister stood with her arms wrapped around herself.

Lottie slowed beside her.

Her sister looked straight ahead.

From the widow's arms, in the loudest voice a three-year-old has, Daisy shouted, "That's my MAMA!"

The fair roared.

I came down off that stage laughing and crying at once, and the diner owner hugged me so hard my hat fell off.

By ten that night Daisy was asleep on the widow's sofa with a stuffed pony under each arm.

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