I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Scar

Nobody on the street moved.

Roxana came to the top of the porch steps and held out her left arm in the porch light.

The scar ran from her wrist to the bend of her elbow, long and white and raised.

"He's right," she said. "I have a scar."

Bennett smiled at the crowd and spread his hands.

"I didn't do it to myself," Roxana said. "A cake stand did it, at my engagement party at Gull Island Lodge, four years ago.

"His father stood over me and said, 'Keep her down, she'll thank you.'

"Ask your neighbors who were on that lawn. Ask them who stopped it."

Nobody on the street answered.

On the lawn, a man in a fishing vest looked down at his boots.

Her voice shook, but she kept going.

"I stayed four more years, because he said it was a joke, and I believed him until I watched him do it to Della."

Rhoda's phone had gone quiet in the window.

On the lawn, the woman from the bakery put her hand over her mouth.

"That's a lie," Bennett said. "She's confused."

"Son," said the man in the bathrobe. "Go home."

"I will not be spoken to like..."

A sheriff's cruiser rolled up behind Bennett's car with its lights off, and a young deputy got out.

"Rhoda called me twenty minutes ago," the deputy said. "Sir, I'm going to need your keys."

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, sir. That's why I'm going to need your keys."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Chose a New Life from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.