He Signed His Divorce Without Reading It, Now He Kneels novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Ten Minutes

I looked at the photograph for a long time, and Iris looked at the floor.

Colin's mouth was in her hair. Her hand was flat on his knee.

"You have ten minutes," I said. "Is that right?"

"How did you know?"

"You keep looking at your watch."

She pulled her sleeve down over it.

"Lorna thinks I'm at the pharmacy. Her driver is parked at the corner." She swallowed. "I'll say the line was long."

I took her into my office and shut the door.

She didn't sit. She stood by the window with her raincoat dripping on the floor.

"It didn't start when Franklin got sick," she said. "I told you in the hall at Lorna's, and you let it go by. It started before my wedding."

"With Colin."

"We were together first. For a year." Her voice shook. "Colin never asked me to marry him. He asked what his mother would think."

"And Franklin asked."

"Franklin asked, and Lorna was so pleased. She said it kept me in the family." Iris laughed, and it was a wet little sound. "She didn't say which brother."

"Did Franklin know?"

"I think he found out last. I think he knew in the end."

I thought of Franklin in that bed, asking for his brother, and of Iris in the kitchen with her face in Colin's chest.

I didn't say any of it.

"Why did she slap you?" I said. "At the funeral. In front of everyone."

Iris turned around.

"Because of a piece of paper," she said.

"The waiver."

"A different one. Mine. It said I wouldn't contest anything in Franklin's will, whatever it said." She pressed her fingers to her cheek, where the mark had been. "She put it in front of me in the church vestibule, an hour before the service. I said I wanted to read it first."

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