The Wife They Burned novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Porch

"Stay here," Abel said.

"No," I said.

I set the coffee down on the windowsill and went to the door before he could.

I opened it in his flannel shirt, with my bare legs and my hair half down.

Marshall's hand was still raised.

He lowered it slowly.

He looked at the shirt.

Then past me, at Abel in the kitchen doorway in his T-shirt.

Then at the bedroom door standing open behind him.

I watched him add it up.

He had always been fast with numbers.

"Ada," he said.

"How did you find this house?"

"His address is in the county directory. Your car was at Lantern House and that woman wouldn't tell me anything." His jaw moved. "She called me a word I won't repeat."

"Joy has a large vocabulary."

Sarge came up beside my leg and sat, pressing against my knee, looking at Marshall.

He didn't growl.

He didn't have to.

Marshall took a step back on the porch boards anyway.

"Can we talk?" he said. "Privately?"

"No."

"Ada, please."

He'd never said please to me in seven years.

Not once.

Not when I was in labor for twenty hours, and he asked if it would be much longer because he had a dinner.

"A detective called the house yesterday," he said. "She asked for Fallon. By name. She wants her to come in and answer questions."

"Good."

"Fallon hasn't slept. She threw up twice. Mother had the doctor out at midnight."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"Are you?" He looked at me with real pain in his face. "She's fragile, Ada. You know she is. She had a breakdown in London. If you keep feeding this woman stories, it'll destroy her."

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