My Husband Is Dead Or Is He? novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Dry Dock

Orin's POV

I spent the night in my truck at the dry dock, with the heater off and my breath fogging the glass.

I didn't sleep.

I kept hearing her say it in the hall. You had no right to be the one who heard it.

She was right, and nothing I could say would change that.

At first light the long gate rattled, and a camel coat came across the gravel.

My mother walked as if the yard were her front lawn.

I got out of the truck and leaned on it, because my legs weren't sure of her.

"You look terrible," Bernadette said. "Did she throw you out?"

"Yes."

"Good."

She stopped ten feet from me, where the ground ran down to the black slip and the iron ladder.

That ladder was what I had looked at for three years, every time I shut my eyes.

"It's a cold place to sleep," she said. "Come home. I've kept your old room."

"No."

"Dale is sitting in her friend's kitchen right now with a paper. It gives her four million dollars for her shares and a quiet life. It gives you a flight to Thunder Bay and no charges."

"And if she doesn't sign?"

"Then the sheriff comes for you by noon." She smiled. "Impersonating the dead is fraud, Orin. Taking a widow's gifts under a false name is theft. I'm very sorry. I tried to do this gently."

"You told me to be him."

"I asked you to hold a phone for one year, for a brother who could no longer use it. You did it for three. That was your idea."

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