When I Reached the Accident Scene to Save My Biker Husband, I Found His Mistress Wearing My Tenth-Anniversary Gift for Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: My Mother's Kitchen

My mother's kitchen light was on at seven the next morning, because it was always on at seven.

Hank stopped the truck at the curb.

He had not asked me one question all night, and he didn't ask one now.

"I'll be right here," he said.

I walked up the path with the index card in my coat pocket.

She was at the stove in her blue robe, with her gray hair pinned up and her glasses pushed into it.

"You look terrible," she said. "Sit. There's oatmeal."

"Mom."

"Sit, Bridget."

I sat.

She put a bowl in front of me and a spoon next to it, and I did not touch either one.

I took out the card and laid it on the table between us.

"I need you to read this."

She wiped her hands on the dish towel.

She put on her glasses and bent over the card.

I watched her lips move on the first line.

Then they stopped.

The kitchen clock ticked over the stove.

She read it all the way down, and she read the last line, and she straightened up slowly and took her glasses off.

"Whose writing is that?" she said.

"Gus's."

"Mm."

"Travis told me himself, Mom. Last night. He was driving. Danny was on the back."

She turned around and looked out the window over the sink.

There was a bird feeder in the yard that Danny had built from a cedar fence board when he was fourteen.

She had refilled it every week for eleven years.

"I always wondered," she said.

My stomach dropped.

"You wondered?"

"Danny didn't drink and ride. Not ever. Your father taught him better, and he listened." Her voice was very even. "I said so to Gus, at the funeral. He held my hand and said grief makes a mother see what she wants to."

"You never told me."

"What would I have told you? That I didn't believe what the police said, and had nothing else?"

She turned back from the window.

Her face was dry, and it was the hardest face I had ever seen on her.

"Come here," she said.

I got up, and she held me with her chin on my hair.

She smelled like coffee and the lavender soap she had used my whole life.

"Eleven years I sat next to that man at Easter," she said.

"I know."

"He carved the ham."

"I know, Mom."

She let go of me and walked out of the kitchen.

I heard the hall closet open.

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