My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Free

I looked at him through the gap in the doors.

His hand on the rubber edge. His coat over his arm.

Four years ago I'd thought he was the most composed man I had ever met.

"You didn't get tired of me, Graydon," I said. "You got caught."

His hand came off the door.

The doors closed on his face.

I watched the numbers go down to one.

My lawyer chuckled beside me.

"I've waited twenty years to see somebody say that to a man like him," she said.

"Was it good?"

"It was very good."

Hutch was waiting in the parking lot in the truck with the engine running.

He'd driven me up the Edens at seven that morning and refused to come in.

"It's your room," he'd said. "Not mine."

I climbed in and shut the door and sat there.

"Well?" he said.

I held up my left hand.

Nothing on it but cold.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he took it and kissed the pale place on my ring finger, which had almost faded.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"You want to go to Fran's?"

"I want to go home."

He didn't ask which one I meant.

Fran was already at Moonlite.

She'd packed my things that morning, without asking, and loaded them into the Corolla.

Two suitcases. My mother's rosary in a sandwich bag. The paint box. Three garbage bags of clothes I'd bought on Archer Avenue since October.

She was standing at the bottom of the narrow stairs with a suitcase in each hand.

"Took you long enough," she said.

"Fran, I didn't say I was moving."

"You didn't have to. You've been sleeping here four nights a week since Christmas and lying to me about it."

"I wasn't lying."

"You said you were working late."

"I was working late."

"On what? Him?"

The bartender laughed so hard she had to put down a pitcher.

Fran carried the suitcases up the stairs herself and wouldn't let Hutch touch them.

At the top she looked around the long brick room.

The bed. The library books. The couch under the neon moon.

The pale rectangle on the wall over the bed.

"Huh," she said. "I thought there'd be more."

"More what?"

"I don't know. Velvet."

She set down the suitcases.

Then she turned around and hugged me, hard, the way she had in the parking lot in October.

"You're gonna miss my couch," she said into my hair.

"I'm going to miss the bar across my back."

"Liar."

"I'm going to miss you."

"I'm four miles away and I bowl here every Tuesday. You'll be sick of me by March."

She let go and wiped her face, careful of her nails.

Then she pointed at Hutch.

"Hutchinson."

"Fran."

"If you make her cry, I'll know. I'll know from Bridgeport."

"I believe you."

"Good."

She went down the stairs.

We heard her tell the mailmen at the bar that she'd just given her sister away and needed a beer.

We heard them give her one.

Hutch and I stood in the long room with my whole life in two suitcases and three garbage bags.

"There's a drawer," he said. "I cleared a drawer."

"One drawer?"

"I cleared four. I didn't want to scare you."

I put my mother's rosary on the windowsill by the couch.

I hung my good coat on the hook by the door, next to his.

Then I stood in the middle of the room and turned around once, slowly.

"It's mine," I said.

"It's yours."

"Not mine because of a man. Not mine because of a name on a lease."

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