He Called Every Truth a Lie novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Write It Down Right

Ethan's POV

I took the six o'clock shift, and I took the next one too.

At nine we got a call to a ranch house on the east side, a woman with a split lip sitting on her front steps with a dish towel.

Her husband stood in the doorway behind her, saying she'd fallen.

She had been listening to him say it for years, and I could see it on her.

I knelt in front of her and I didn't look at him.

"Ma'am, tell me what happened, and I'll write exactly what you say."

She looked up at me, and her eyes went wide.

"He said you'd write what he told you."

"I did that once," I said. "I won't do it again."

She told me all of it.

I wrote it word for word on the tablet, and I read it back to her before I touched send.

My partner drove us to the hospital without saying anything.

At midnight we were back at the station, washing down the rig under the bay lights, and I couldn't stop thinking about a woman in a camel coat on a gray stairwell.

I had walked away from Joanna Mullane twice in my life, and I had done it a third time that afternoon.

Because I'd seen her face turn toward her husband.

I told myself it was sense.

I told myself every wife on every call goes back, and the man says he's sorry in a quiet voice, and I would be the idiot who had hoped.

"Conlan," my partner said. "You've got company."

She was standing at the edge of the light with two paper cups in her hands.

Her coat was buttoned wrong.

She had the black tote on her shoulder, and her eyes were red from no sleep.

I turned off the hose.

"Joanna."

"You said I looked like I was still deciding." She held out one of the cups. "I was. I went down there to hear him say it, so I'd never have to hear it again."

"And?"

"And he said it. I listened to every word and I didn't feel anything but tired." Her voice shook. "You left before I finished. I decided in the hall, Ethan. I decided at the courthouse. I decided when you put the blanket over me."

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