My Husband Buried Me in Gossip, So I Came Back With His Brother novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Produce Line

At the Saturday market Jo makes the family doctor put his words about her head in front of a line of shoppers, sees a gray sedan, and is invited to give a friend's toast at the Chamber luncheon.

On the first Saturday in June, the courthouse square smelled of strawberries and fried dough.

I stood in the produce line with my daughter, who had a cider donut in one hand and her notebook under her arm.

She wrote down every phone number I had ever dialed in front of her.

She was eleven, and she did not trust anything she could not write down.

"Mom, the lady says it's two quarts for eleven dollars," she said. "That's a deal if you don't count the tax."

"There's no tax on strawberries," I said. "Keep eating."

"I'm just saying."

Behind us, someone said, "Jo, honey."

I turned around and found our family doctor, in his Saturday polo and his good boat shoes, with a canvas bag over his arm.

He had delivered my daughter.

He had also, once, told a room of twenty-two relatives that I had not been myself.

"How are you sleeping?" he asked, and he patted my arm twice. "With everything going on. Todd's worried."

The woman in front of me turned her head.

So did the man behind the doctor, with a flat of tomatoes.

In the first life, I had stood in this exact line and thanked him for asking.

"Todd's worried," I said.

"We all are, hon."

"About what, exactly?"

He gave a little laugh.

"Oh, you know. The stress. The forgetfulness. We can talk Monday, I'll have my girl call."

My heart was going hard, but my voice stayed level, and I kept it at the volume I used for the dental office waiting room.

"Doctor, you and I have known each other twenty years."

"We have," he said.

"I've made every appointment for your wife's crown since January, and she hasn't missed one."

"That's true," he said, uncertain now.

"Put in writing what Todd told you about my head," I said. "Right here. I'll read it out loud for everyone."

Nobody in the produce line was looking at the strawberries anymore.

The doctor's color went from pink to gray.

"Jo, now. Nobody said anything about your head."

"Good," I said. "Then I'll tell Todd you said so."

My daughter stopped chewing.

"Eleven dollars, please," said the strawberry woman, carefully, and I paid her and took the quarts.

The doctor was gone before the change was in my hand.

I put my arm around her shoulders as we walked on.

"Mom," she said. "Was that about the thing Grandma says?"

"What thing?" I asked.

"That you're tired," she said.

"I'm not tired," I said. "I'm fine. Ask me again in a year, and I'll still be fine."

She considered this.

"Okay," she said, and wrote something in her notebook.

Across the square, on the courthouse side, sat a gray sedan with its windows cracked.

A man in a ball cap was in the driver's seat, looking at his phone.

I would not have noticed it, except that I had seen the same car idling on Main Street on Thursday.

I did not have time to think about it, because Darlene was coming across the grass with a bag of rhubarb in her arms.

My mother-in-law was sixty-eight, in her church-supper apron and her good quilted vest, and she smiled at me with every tooth.

"Joanna, dear," she said. "I was short with you at the party. That was unkind of me."

"It was a stressful day," I said.

"I'll make it up to you. You and the children will come for supper on Sunday."

I looked at her face, bright and pleased and kind.

In the first life she had not said a gentle word to me after Easter.

"I'd love that," I said, and took the rhubarb.

She patted my cheek and left.

I stood there holding her gift and a quart of strawberries and I thought that a kind Darlene meant she was planning something.

"Jo! There you are!"

A woman in a bright blue blazer came toward us with her hand out.

Her face was the face on the bench outside the bank.

Brandi Whitacre was thirty-three, a Realtor, and the person Todd was sleeping with.

She had also been my friend since March, with texts and lunches and a cake on my birthday.

I had thought it was kind.

"I've been trying to catch you," Brandi said. "Don't say no."

"The Chamber's Women of Findlay luncheon is the twelfth," she went on. "They're giving me Woman of the Year."

"Congratulations," I said.

"I want my dear friend to give the friend's toast. It would mean the world."

She squeezed my fingers, and I saw the little gold key on her bracelet ring.

It was a cabin key, with a green plastic tag.

"I'd be honored," I said.

Brandi kissed the air beside my cheek and went away down the row, shaking hands.

"I like her," my daughter said. "She gave me a pen."

"That's nice," I said, and my hands were cold around the strawberries.

At the honey stall, a man was reading the label on a jar with a beagle sitting patiently on his boot.

He did not look at me.

"Tell me you said yes," Dale said.

"I said yes."

"Good," he said, to the jar. "She wants you humiliated in front of the whole Chamber."

"She's going to hand you the mic to do it," he said. "Say yes to everything."

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