Husband Faked His Death and Left Me, Now He Regrets It, Sorry, You Can Only Repent at My Grave novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Thirty Signatures

The envelope lay in the middle of my mother's kitchen table, unopened, with my Tucson address in the corner.

It was Saturday, and I had an eight-hour pass from the trial center and a bruise on the back of my hand.

My father stood at the counter with his arms folded.

Stewart sat at the end of the table with Junie asleep on his shoulder.

"I didn't open it," my father said. "It isn't addressed to me."

"It's not addressed to me either."

"Your name's on the return."

I slit it with a butter knife.

The letter inside was typed on plain white paper, three short paragraphs.

It said I, Geneva Cassidy, was resigning from the firm effective at once, and waiving my health coverage.

It said I was sorry about the money.

It said I knew what I had done and did not expect to be forgiven.

At the bottom was my signature, loop on the C and flat tail on the last l.

"Money?" Stewart said.

"I never took a dime from anyone," I said. "I've kept books for three years. I could pass an audit in my sleep."

I turned the page over.

A second sheet was clipped behind it, stuck there, I thought, by accident.

It was covered in my signature.

Thirty of them, in rows.

The first few leaned the wrong way and the middle ones were better, and by the end, they were mine.

My mother took one look and sat down hard.

"She practiced," she whispered. "She sat in my kitchen and practiced."

"Dad," I said. "Where did you find this?"

"I didn't find it. I watched her put it there."

I looked up.

"Tuesday night," my father said. "I couldn't sleep. I sat in the dark on the porch with a thermos, and at twenty past eleven her car came down the road with its lights off, and she only switched them on at my mailbox to find the flag."

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