My Husband Lost My Jealousy novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Her Terms

I did not wait for Hester to make her phone call.

At eight the next morning I was at Cedar Row with a bank transfer already approved on my phone.

Desmond had driven me.

He had come downstairs in yesterday's shirt and said, "I'm coming," and I had not argued.

The director met us in her office.

I put my checkbook on her desk.

"I'd like to pay my mother's fees myself," I said. "Six months, in advance, starting today. Please send the Carrow trust whatever form you need to close the account."

She looked from me to Desmond and back.

"Mrs. Carrow, that's more than sixty thousand dollars."

"Sixty-eight," I said. "I checked."

It was three years of book covers.

It was every coffee I had not bought.

The director picked up her pen and did not ask another question.

I signed.

I felt lighter than I had in years.

Then we went out into the parking lot, and it was raining.

Desmond held the car door for me.

"You just spent your savings," he said.

"I spent my mother's six months."

"I could have paid it."

"I know." I looked at him over the roof of the car. "That's why I didn't ask."

He took that in.

He did not argue.

I got in, and he drove, and neither of us talked.

Rain ran down the windshield in sheets.

The wipers went back and forth.

I watched his hands on the wheel, and I thought about the knee under the table and the heat that had gone through me.

I thought about how I had not felt anything in three years, and how I felt everything now, all at once, loud and unwanted.

By the time he turned into our drive, I had made up my mind.

He cut the engine.

"Katja, I..."

"Come inside."

"I want to say..."

"Desmond." I turned in my seat. "Come inside."

He looked at me.

Whatever he saw in my face made him stop talking.

We did not get as far as the stairs.

The hall was dim, and the door had barely shut behind us when I took hold of his lapels and pulled him down to me.

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