Chapter 17: The Front Page

The chaise by the window was empty when Imogen woke.

His coat was gone from the hook, and his two suitcases were gone from the hall.

A note lay on the pillow in his square hand.

*The terms are finished and so am I, in this house. I won't make you look at me. I'll be at the harbor. Not leaving. T.*

She read it twice and set it face down on the sheet.

The sheet was cold, and she had known it would be.

Hattie rang the bell at nine with a newspaper under her arm and her hair standing on end.

"Don't go to the window," Hattie said. "There are four photographers across the street."

"Then why are you smiling?"

"Because of this."

She unfolded the Asterhaven Courier on the kitchen table.

The whole front page was one block of type.

There was no photograph, no headline fanfare, and no box of advertising rules.

It began with a single line in black letters.

*I ASKED HER A HUNDRED TIMES.*

*My name is Percy Wexford.*

*For three years I told my wife to leave a marriage I had begged her into.*

*I believed what I was told, and I never checked it.*

*I am not asking the city to forgive me.*

*I am telling you the truth so that she never has to prove it again.*

*She did not trap me, and she did not take a dollar.*

*She stayed three years in a house that wanted her gone, and I made her stay alone.*

*I cannot give her those years back.*

*I can say it in print, with my name on it, where my mother and my friends and every one of you will read it.*

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