The Wife They Burned novel · Chapter 18 of 32
Chapter 18: Smoke
"Say that to the detective," I said.
Marshall looked at me from the bottom step.
"Tomorrow," I said. "Nine o'clock. I'll drive you myself."
"She's my mother, Ada."
"She was Junie's grandmother."
He flinched.
Then he walked back to the gray sedan and drove away, slowly, with his headlights off until the corner.
I stood on the porch with the strip of orange paper in my fist until my feet went numb.
In the morning I told the detective every word.
She wrote it all down.
Then she put her pen down.
"He'll deny it," she said. "You were alone. It's midnight, it's Christmas, you're his ex-wife and you spent the night at the house of the investigator he says has a grudge. I can't take that to a prosecutor."
"So what do I do?"
"Live your life," she said. "And lock your doors."
So I lived it.
I'd been working on a grant since October, the kind of application that runs sixty pages and asks the same question nine ways.
The second week of January, a children's charity in Hartford called and said yes.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Wife They Burned are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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