My Husband Sent the Helicopter to Save a Dog, So I Signed novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Sixty-One Unread

I went to the house the next morning for my things, because Mitchell would be in the office until six.

Glass walls, white stone, a lawn nobody had ever sat on.

I'd lived there three years and couldn't remember laughing in it.

I let myself in with my own key and went straight to the hall closet for Nonna's rosary, which I'd left in a coat pocket the week of the fire.

"You can stop sneaking," a voice said from the kitchen. "I heard your car."

Constance Bradbury sat at the island with a pot of tea and a mountain of unopened mail.

She was sixty-two, with a silver bob and reading glasses on a chain, and she had never once pretended to like her son's taste.

She had, from the first dinner, liked me.

"Constance," I said. "I didn't know you were here."

"Nobody tells me when he's not home. I come on Thursdays and open his letters. Somebody should."

She slit one with a butter knife.

"You look terrible, dear," she said. "Sit."

I sat.

She poured me a cup and pushed it across the stone.

Then she saw my hands.

Her whole face changed.

"What happened to your hands?"

"Mitchell didn't tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"My grandmother died eleven days ago," I said. "In the Cedar Flats fire. I carried her out of the car and the road burned me."

Constance put the knife down.

She was quiet so long I heard the refrigerator hum.

"Nobody told me," she said finally. "I've called him four times. Odette answers. She says he's in Seattle or in a meeting."

"He's been in meetings since the fire."

"I sent a card."

"I got it. It was lovely."

"I sent it to your address, because I thought he'd throw his own away." Her mouth twisted. "Rosa. I met her once, at the wedding. She taught me to fold a napkin."

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