The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Room Nine

The letter was one page.

I read it standing at the kitchen counter with Lena on one side of me and Ben, back from the trash, on the other.

Kristin wrote that she was sorry, in the first line, and again in the third.

She wrote that she had been sick, and that she had been getting help.

She wrote that she was back across the bridge in Superior, at the Lakeview Motel, room nine, and that she would be there until Monday.

She wrote that she wanted her daughter.

She did not write the girl's name, because the girl had no name.

She wrote: Please come alone. I only want to talk to you.

"You are not going alone," Ben said.

"She asked."

"She also asked you for four years to hold still while she gave you a needle."

I looked at him.

"I'll sit in the truck," he said. "I won't come in. But I'll be in the lot."

Lena took Anders without being asked.

"Go," she said. "Be quick. Say nothing you wouldn't say in front of a judge."

The Blatnik Bridge was white with early snow.

Ben drove, and neither of us talked.

I watched the ore docks go by, rust-red and frozen, and I held the letter in my lap.

The Lakeview Motel was a low gray row of doors facing a parking lot.

There was no lake in view.

Ben parked across from room nine, with the engine off.

"Twenty minutes," I said.

"Twenty minutes."

"If I'm not out, you don't come in. You call the county."

"I'm a paramedic," he said. "I'll come in."

I got out.

Room nine's curtain was drawn.

I knocked.

She opened the door.

I had seen Kristin in a hospital gown, in a church hall, on a highway shoulder under a floodlight.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Secret That Broke Us from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.