No More Husband, No More Son novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Six Minutes

Leona goes to the Pennington house for her mother's ring, Cassidy shows her Milo's room with her gone from every shelf and then calls the police, and the officer on the porch is the one who arrested her.

The next morning I walked to the house I had lived in for eight years.

Roz offered to drive me, and I told her I needed to do the first part on my feet.

Brice's campaign sign stood in the front yard.

*Pennington: Family First.*

It had my husband's face on it and a smiling boy beside him, cut from a photograph I remembered taking.

I had been in that photograph too, standing on the left.

They had trimmed me out.

I rang the bell.

Brice was at a ribbon cutting across town, and I knew it because the radio in Roz's van had said so.

Milo would be at school until three.

The door opened, and Cassidy stood there in a cream cardigan with her hair in a soft bun.

"Leona," she said, and her whole face lit up. "I was hoping you'd come. Please, come in. I just made coffee."

I stepped in because I wanted her to tell me everything she wanted to tell me.

The hallway smelled of vanilla candles.

My mother's blue vase was gone from the table.

"I came for my mother's ring," I said. "It was in the jewelry box upstairs. And I want my son's birth certificate."

"Of course. Anything you need." She touched my arm. "Let me show you something first."

She led me up the stairs and opened the door to Milo's room.

His bed had a new gray bedspread.

The shelf where I had kept his baby shoes and my photographs held a row of trophies instead.

On the dresser stood a framed photo of Cassidy and Milo on a dock, both squinting into the sun.

I looked at every wall.

My face was not on one of them.

"He calls me Mama Cass now," she said softly. "It started in the first winter. He doesn't ask about you anymore. I think that's healthy, don't you?"

"Where are my pictures?"

"In a box in the garage, I think. We needed the space."

I walked past her down the hall.

The main bedroom door was open, and the bed was made with a pale blue quilt I had never seen.

My jewelry box sat on the vanity, where I had left it.

The lock had been forced and put back.

I lifted the lid.

My mother's gold ring was in the corner, with a small garnet in the setting.

I put it on my finger, and it still fit.

Cassidy was in the doorway behind me.

The warmth had dropped off her face.

"That belongs to the household," she said.

"It belonged to my mother."

"Brice's attorney will say it's marital property."

"Then Brice's attorney can ask me for it."

I stepped toward the door, and she did not move out of it.

"You think you're a hero," she said quietly. "A video, a van and a stranger's laundromat."

"I think I'm leaving."

"Eight weeks until the election, Leona. Then he's a commissioner and I'm the commissioner's wife, and you are a woman who went to prison for hurting me."

"I didn't hurt you."

"A jury says you did."

She smiled, and it was the same sweet smile she had worn at the gate.

"Go ahead. Take the ring. It's the last thing you'll take out of this house."

I turned my shoulder and pushed past her.

She let me go.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, and I heard her behind me, speaking in a high, breathless voice.

"Yes, hello? I need the police. A woman is in my home. She just got out of prison, and I'm afraid of her."

I turned.

She was standing at the top of the stairs with her phone to her ear and her free hand over her heart.

Her eyes were wet.

She had not blinked once.

"She's wearing a gold ring that isn't hers," she told the dispatcher. "She's upset. Please hurry."

I had walked in through the front door she had opened for me.

I had been there six minutes.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

Across the street was a hardware store with a green awning.

A man in a canvas jacket stood inside the front window with a coil of rope in his hands.

He was looking straight at me, and he did not move.

A police cruiser turned the corner and pulled up to the curb.

The officer who got out was tall, with a thick neck and a buzz cut.

He climbed the walk with his hand resting on his belt.

I knew his walk before I knew his face.

He was the officer who had put the handcuffs on me in this exact spot three years ago.

"Mrs. Pennington," he said, almost kindly. "Turn around, please."

The cuffs clicked on my wrists before I had finished turning.

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