The Wife They Burned novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: Thirty Days

The boy from room seven picked the paper up before I could.

He read the top line out loud, slowly.

"Notice to vacate."

His mother crossed the room and took it out of his hands.

"Thirty days," Marshall's mother said pleasantly. "That's generous. Most landlords give fewer."

"You're not a landlord," Joy said. "You're a woman with a checkbook and a dead granddaughter you didn't visit."

The room went silent.

Marshall's mother looked at Joy for a long moment over her pearls.

"I'll remember you said that."

"Good. I'll say it slower next time."

Marshall's mother turned and walked out.

The lawyer followed her and shut the door very gently behind him.

Then the father by the window said, "Is that true? About the house?"

"I don't know yet," I said.

At dinner, I stood up at the head of the long table.

Joy had made chicken and rice for sixteen.

"You deserve to know what's going on," I said.

So I told them.

Not about the fire. I couldn't prove a word of that yet.

But the rest.

That I'd left my husband. That his family paid for this house. That they'd decided to stop because of me.

"It's not about any of you," I said. "It's about me. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize for leaving a man," a mother at the far end said. "I left two."

A few people laughed.

The boy from room seven raised his hand.

"Where do we go in thirty days?"

"Nowhere," I said. "You stay. I'll figure it out."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

He thought about that.

"That's the second time you said that."

"I know. I'm working on a better answer."

After dinner, his mother found me in the laundry room.

She was a small woman with her hair in a clip.

She still had her store vest on under her cardigan, from her night shifts at the supermarket by the hospital.

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