Now I Watch Her Love Him novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Beth's Lawn

Dylan's POV

I came home Saturday night to a house that sounded different.

The studio door stood open.

The desk was gone, the lamp was gone, and the wall where she hung her drawings had thirty small holes in it.

In the kitchen, on the island, lay the index card with her ring on top of it.

The house keys sat beside it, and so did the credit card I had put in her name when we were twenty-six.

I picked up the ring.

It was still warm from the lamp over the island, and it was smaller than I remembered.

I sat on a stool with it in my fist for an hour.

On Sunday I drove to Beth's with a bunch of grocery-store roses and nothing prepared.

Beth rents a brick house in Kettering with a porch swing and a flag she has never taken down.

Hannah was on the swing in the gray cardigan, with a sketchbook on her knee.

When she saw my car she closed it.

I walked up the path with the roses held out in front of me.

Beth came through the screen door before I reached the steps.

"No," she said.

"I want to talk to my wife."

"She doesn't want to talk to you."

"Let her say it."

"I'm saying it. Put the flowers down."

I did not put the flowers down.

Beth took them out of my hand, and I let her, because I was too surprised to hold on.

She stripped the plastic off the stems.

Then she walked to the edge of the porch, held a rose over the lawn, and snapped its head off.

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