New Husband. Old One Gone novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Inconclusive

Bryce folded the page in half, then in half again, and slid it into his breast pocket.

"Mrs. Gwaltney," he said to Mama. "You look well."

Mama's hand tightened on my arm.

"The colonel said you'd have no part in this," I said.

"I don't." He smiled at me. "The XO reads everything in this building, Rosie. I'll make sure it gets a fair look."

"Like you made sure the box got one."

The smile stayed.

Two lance corporals had stopped in the passageway with their folders. Bryce glanced at them, and they remembered somewhere else to be.

He turned back to Mama.

"I've missed your Sunday dinners, ma'am. I hope you know that."

Mama looked up at him.

"You'll go on missing them," she said.

She walked us out the glass doors without letting go of my arm.

Then we waited.

The colonel had said ten days.

By the second day I was checking my phone every time a seagull landed on the shed roof.

So I worked.

On Thursday Sawyer showed up at the yard at five in a borrowed welding hood.

"Teach me," he said.

"Why?"

"Because you get this look when you do it. I want to know what it's about."

I gave him a piece of scrap angle iron and stood behind him with my hands on his.

He laid a bead.

"That's beautiful," he said, flipping up the hood.

"That's a crime scene, Pickard."

"I'll frame it."

He did. He hung it in the stair at the Ropewalk on a nail, and his crew signed it.

On Saturday, Mama walked into the big shed at noon carrying a stockpot by both handles.

Chicken bog. Enough for the whole yard and Sawyer's crew, who'd come out to help me pull the jon boats.

Nine men and three yard hands lined up at the welding bench with paper plates.

Keep reading free with an account. Start New Husband. Old One Gone from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.