My Husband, My Sister: A Secret Betrayal novel · Chapter 26 of 32
Chapter 26: Forty Neighbors
Laura's POV
Daniel came back across the lawn alone, and his face told me before he reached the tent.
"She has the pills," he said in my ear. "She has the caseworker at table four. If you stand up, she hands over the bottle."
"What bottle?"
"Your prescription. Full. She'll say you stopped it."
"I did stop it. I left it on our counter the night I walked out."
"I know."
Claire had come back around the tent with her cake.
She set it at the head of the long table, in the place of honor, and kissed Winnie on both cheeks.
At table four a woman in a gray blazer sat with a paper plate in her lap.
She had come to a birthday party with a folder.
"Let her," I said.
"Laura."
"She wants me to be afraid of my own head. I've been afraid of it for three years, and I'm done."
I took Bea's hand from Winnie's, kissed her curls, and put her in Daniel's arms.
Winnie lifted the microphone at one o'clock and tapped it twice.
"Seventy years," she said, and the lawn cheered. "I've had a lot of cake from a lot of people. Before we cut it, two people have something to say."
The choir teacher stood first.
She was small and gray-haired, with a silver thumb ring, and her hands shook on the mic.
"Three years ago I sat at a district dinner," she said, "and a young woman asked me to put my hand on a stranger's arm for a picture. She said it was a gift for a husband. She smelled of strawberries. I didn't ask questions, and I should have."
Somebody near the front coughed.
"That picture was used to hurt a woman," the choir teacher said. "I recognize it now. I'm sorry."
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