My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: One Page

We read it together with our heads almost touching under the dome light.

Winthrop Trust. Outgoing wire transfer. October twenty-third.

Amount: two hundred eighty thousand dollars and no cents.

Beneficiary: Lakeshore Fine Art.

Memo: Lobby collection. River, Wells Street. Oil on panel.

Approved by: G. Winthrop, Executive Vice President.

And his signature, the one I'd watched him practice on our wedding license because he wanted the G to look better.

"That's his pen," Hutch said. "He only signs with the green one. He thinks it's distinguished."

The ink was green.

"Drive," I said. "Before somebody comes out to check on the turkey."

He drove.

At the end of the long gravel drive he started laughing again, and so did I, and we didn't stop until the Edens.

Moonlite was supposed to be closed for Thanksgiving.

Every light was on.

Hutch had given Fran a key in case "the strays" wanted somewhere to go.

The strays had brought turkeys.

There were three of them on the bar, carved badly, and a crockpot of stuffing, and a sheet cake from the Jewel that said HAPPY THANKSGIVING MAILMEN.

Fran was on lane four in her Return to Sender shirt, holding a drumstick in one hand and a bowling ball in the other.

"Rich people!" she yelled. "Look who escaped!"

The mailmen cheered.

The bartender put two plates in front of us without asking.

The turkey was wet and salty and perfect.

"Moist," Hutch said, with his mouth full. "Write that down. Somebody tell my brother."

I took the page out of my coat and smoothed it flat on the bar.

Fran read it over my shoulder.

She read it again.

"Is that a lot of money for a little painting of a river?"

"It sold for eight hundred."

"I'm gonna kill him," Fran said, almost cheerfully. "I'm gonna kill him with this drumstick."

"Get in line."

"Is that his signature?"

"In green."

"Oh, he's a green pen guy. Of course he is."

Hutch took the page into the office and ran it through the old copier six times.

He came out and dealt the copies onto the bar.

One for my lawyer. One in the safe under the register.

One for Fran's glovebox, under the ice scraper.

"Nobody looks under an ice scraper," Fran said.

One for my bag. One for the classmate.

The last he held up and looked at.

"Who's that one for?" I asked.

"I don't know yet," he said, and put it in the safe with the other one.

The mailmen didn't know what any of it meant.

They knew we were happy, and that was enough for them.

Somebody put a polka on the jukebox.

The pink-cardigan senior, who had come with her grandson, danced with the notary.

At midnight Fran pulled on her hoodie and kissed the top of my head.

"I'm driving the mailmen home," she said. "Half of them can't see at night and the other half won't admit it."

"Text me when you're in."

"Yes, Mom."

She went out with four retired mailmen behind her.

The bartender turned off the lane lights one row at a time and called goodnight.

Then it was just the hum of the cooler and the neon moon.

I went down the back hall to the party room.

I pinned my copy of the wire to the easel with a pushpin, right in the middle of a blank canvas.

I stood back and looked at it.

His green signature in the work lamp.

Hutch leaned in the doorway in his tweed jacket.

"You're going to frame it," he said.

"I'm going to paint it. Big. Fourteen feet."

"I'll buy the canvas."

I turned around.

He was looking at me the way he'd looked at me at the table, with his hand under Fran's dress and his face completely calm.

"You started something at dinner," I said.

"I seem to remember you moved my hand."

"Two inches."

"Felt like more."

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