They Called Me Barren. They Picked the Wrong Wife novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Guest Book

"Yes," Callum said.

He did not ask me to take it back.

He took his canvas jacket off the chair, and Bev opened her mouth, and he shook his head at her.

"I'll be at the workshop," he said to me. "The door's unlocked. I won't come looking."

The back door closed behind him, and a minute later his truck started in the road.

I sat with my hand flat on my bag.

"Well," Bev said. "That was a great deal of honesty for one kitchen."

"Don't, Bev."

"I'm not saying a word." She poured coffee neither of us wanted and said several. "I've known that boy since he was nine. He mowed my yard for four dollars and ate half my tomatoes."

"I'm allowed to be angry."

"You are. Be angry at the right size." She set the pot down hard. "He came back to a mother who'd skin him, and he slept on my couch, so he could say the one thing that would make you hate him. Do you know what a man has to want to do that?"

"He gave her my name."

"He gave his mother the name of a girl he liked. Your name was on that list because Lorraine put it there, in her own pen."

I looked at the blue ink.

"The question isn't whether he's sorry," Bev said. "The question is how long she's been at it."

"She said she chose me for one thing."

"Did she start at the soup kitchen, or before your grandmother was even in the ground?"

I had no answer.

Then I did.

"The guest book," I said.

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