My Husband's Smart House Only Listens to Her novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Script

Mara's POV

Lia came to Colleen's door at ten that night, without her phone.

She held up her empty hands on the landing to prove it.

"I left it in a cup holder at a gas station on Mineral Point," she said. "He thinks I'm still in line for gum."

Colleen stood behind me in the doorway with her arms folded and the one-eyed cat winding between her ankles.

"She gets five minutes," Colleen said. "And I'm timing it."

"That's fair," Lia said.

We sat at the kitchen table, and Lia slid a folded paper across it.

It had been creased into quarters and then eighths, and it was warm.

"It's the run of show," she said. "I printed it at the hotel business center so there'd be nothing on a server."

I smoothed it flat.

It was a grid of times and cues, in Neil's cramped square handwriting along the margins.

My eyes went down the page to a box he had outlined twice.

[Cue 14, 8:41 p.m. "The Welcome Home Moment." M. arrives at the model door. House LOCKS. M. says "Hearth, let me in." House HOLDS. Calm protocol: soft voice, dimmed lights, N. enters, takes her hand. Hold on the hug. Applause.]

Under that, in pencil, he had written one more line.

[She will not be told. Keep her surprised. Natural reaction = case study.]

I read it twice.

Colleen read it over my shoulder, and I heard her breathing change.

"He's going to lock you out on a stage," she said. "In front of four hundred people."

"And let me panic," I said. "And call it the product."

"Episode two hundred and thirteen," Lia whispered.

I put the paper down very carefully.

"He asked me what we talked about at the diner," Lia said. "I told him you called me a whore and left."

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