On Halloween, My Husband Bet I'd Never Leave Him, So I Stopped Waiting novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Shoes

The next afternoon Calvin drove me to the house on Mill Hill, and I did not argue about the rule.

Diana's video had passed forty thousand views overnight, and Gwen had begged me to stop reading the comments.

I turned my phone face down on my knee and watched the road instead.

He had called it trust business.

"The house is part of the trust," he said at the gate, and held up a ring of old keys. "It is yours, and as trustee I have to hand it over in person."

"That is a very convenient rule."

"It is the only one I have left."

The stone house had stood shut for sixteen years.

White sheets covered the furniture in the hall, and the air smelled of cold dust and cedar.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs with my hand on the rail.

"I haven't been in here since the funeral," I said.

"I know. I watched you leave."

He went up first, and I followed him to the end of the hall.

The sickroom still held the narrow bed, stripped to its mattress, and a wooden chair pulled up beside it.

I knew that chair.

I had sat in it every night for a winter, in canvas sneakers because they were quiet on the floor.

"He told me once that you never asked him for anything," Calvin said from the doorway.

"I didn't want his money."

"Then why did you stay?" He asked it carefully. "After he died, I mean. Seventeen years. I have told myself you loved Russell, because that was the only answer that let me keep my promise."

I sat down in the chair.

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