The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Winona

I put the card in my shirt pocket and buttoned it.

Coralee scooped her lipstick and her keys back into her purse.

She didn't ask for the card.

She knew she'd lost it in front of sixty people.

She walked out onto the plaza with her chin up, and the door swung shut on the ice machine.

"Well," Augie said on the drive home. "That was large."

"You didn't do anything."

"I was very large, Liesl. You didn't see it from where you were."

I laughed so hard I had to pull over on Dry Creek Road.

That was Friday.

On Tuesday morning Winona collapsed in the rows.

I was in the barn sharpening pruning shears.

The dog found her first.

He came tearing into the barn barking, a sound I'd never heard out of him, and ran back out, and ran back in.

I followed him down row nine at a dead run.

She was lying on her side between two vines with her straw hat a few feet away.

Her cane was still in her hand.

Her face was gray.

"Winona."

Her eyes opened.

"Don't you dare call an ambulance."

I called an ambulance.

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