My Husband Kept Sending Packages to Ex, So I Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Stock Photo

On Monday I asked my bank for a loan.

The woman at the desk was very kind about it.

She looked at my divorce filing and my driver's pay and my four thousand dollars, and she said no in three different polite ways.

I sat in my car in the bank lot and ate a granola bar.

Then I drove to work.

Mitch was in van 22 when I pulled in, of course.

He rolled his window down.

"Well?"

"No."

"Their loss." He held up his phone. "Get in. I want to show you something."

"We've got thirty minutes to load."

"I'll load your shelf for you. Get in, Hoyle."

I got in.

The heated seat came on under me and I almost forgave him for six years of mornings.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "So I put the little girl's picture into one of those reverse search things. Grandpa showed me how. He uses it to check if fishing reels are fake."

"And?"

He turned the phone around.

It was a stock photo website.

The same little girl.

The same pink blanket, the same giraffe, the same tube taped to her hand.

Under it, the caption said, "Sick child in hospital bed with toy giraffe."

There were eleven more shots from the same photo shoot.

In one of them, the girl was laughing and a woman in a lab coat was fixing her hair.

"Royalty free," Mitch said. "Twelve dollars."

I stared at the price.

"Nine thousand from Columbus," I said. "Thirty-eight thousand four hundred from Keith. For a twelve-dollar picture."

"She probably didn't even pay the twelve," Mitch said. "There's a watermark she cropped out. See the corner?"

I saw the corner.

I wanted to put my fist through the windshield of van 22, and I'd never once wanted to hurt van 22.

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