Chapter 25: The Pill Bottle

Daniel's POV

The woman who touched Laura's arm was a woman from the library, and I had taught her grandson the trombone.

She would not meet my eyes.

I stood on the church lawn with a box of letters under my arm and watched forty people I knew decide that my wife was sick.

The board had pushed Friday's meeting to Monday so the county could sit in, which meant my job hung there all weekend.

Laura did not sit down.

She walked Bea over to Winnie's table, set her down with a cup of juice, and smiled at every pitying face in turn.

I was proud of her so hard it hurt.

"Danny."

I turned.

Claire stood at the corner of the church hall, ten feet from the tent, with her cake still in her hands.

She tipped her head toward the side door.

"Two minutes," she said. "Or I walk over there and tell Laura what you did on Tuesday."

"I didn't do anything on Tuesday."

"Then you won't mind two minutes."

Laura was across the lawn, deep in a knot of neighbors with her back to me.

I set the box of letters in Winnie's hands, and followed Claire.

The church kept its folding tables in a long garage behind the hall.

It smelled of cut grass and stacked chairs.

Claire set the cake on a table and shut the door behind us, and the light went gray.

"I'm going to be kind," she said. "Because I've always been kind to you."

"Say it."

"Let me take Bea."

I laughed, because it was so absurd.

She waited until I stopped.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband, My Sister: A Secret Betrayal from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.