New Husband. Old One Gone novel · Chapter 9 of 32
Chapter 9: Five Days
Nobody said a word the rest of the way down Highway 17.
We dropped Corey at his apartment over the tire shop on the base road side of town.
He got out, then leaned back in the door.
He pulled a pint bottle of Old Crow out of his jacket. Half full.
"Hold this for me, Rosie. Don't give it back. Even if I ask nice."
I took it.
He went up the outside stairs one at a time.
Sawyer drove to the Ropewalk, and we climbed up to the apartment.
He turned on the lamp by the couch where his blanket was still folded from Saturday.
I set the bottle on his kitchen counter.
"How long," I said.
He stood in the middle of the room with his keys in his hand.
"Five days," he said. "Monday before the wedding."
"Tell me."
He put the keys down.
"The paper ran your engagement picture that Monday. You and him on the fuel dock. Corey saw it on the table downstairs at lunch. He didn't say anything. He went out at three and didn't come back to work."
He rubbed his face.
"I found him at eleven that night on the loading dock out back. Drunk as I've ever seen a man. He'd cut his hand on the bottle. He told me all of it. The swap. The curve. What Bryce said to her in the sand. What he said in the hospital."
"Five days," I said.
"He begged me, Ro. On his knees on the concrete. He said it was his to tell. He said he'd been a coward for two years and he wasn't going to let somebody else be brave for him."
"So you let me get dressed."
"I came to the yard Tuesday."
You said 'Don't marry him.' You didn't say why.
"I promised him."
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