A Marriage Left Behind novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Not a Plan B

Thane knocked on Saturday evening holding my scarf.

I had left it on his porch the night of the cocoa, and he had washed it.

I could tell because it smelled of cedar soap instead of me.

All day I had been not thinking about Brady's father in his garage, and the thing he should have told me seven years ago.

"I'd have brought it sooner," he said. "But I wasn't sure which of us was supposed to knock."

"You're a quick learner."

"I teach teenagers. You get used to being the one who knocks."

I let him in.

The kitchen table was covered in paper.

I had printed all eighty-four monthly transfers, one line each, and clipped them in groups of twelve, one stack for every year.

Thane stood at the edge of it with his hands in his jacket pockets and read nothing, deliberately.

"I'm going to Judith's lodge on the twenty-fourth," I said. "I'm bringing these."

"Do you want company?"

"No."

"Do you want coffee?"

"Yes."

He made it himself, because I didn't know where to stand.

I watched his back at my counter, and the way he found the mugs on the first try, and the line of his shoulders under the canvas.

I thought about my husband, who in seven years had never once learned where I kept the mugs.

"Can I ask one thing?" Thane said, with his back still to me.

"Yes."

"Are you going to that lodge to leave him, or to get him back?"

I held the scarf and did not answer right away.

"I don't know yet."

"Okay."

"That's the honest answer. I'm still married, Thane. I wear the ring in the car."

"I know."

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