Sweetheart Wife novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Two Mornings

I ate three pancakes and told Hester they were the best I had ever had.

Both of those things were true, and neither of them was the point.

Jonas sat across the table with his coffee and talked about a sea wall in Folly Beach.

I nodded in the right places.

I watched his hands and thought, he has been lying to me since the steps.

I thought about it through the whole meal, and I did not feel the way I expected.

I felt cold, and under the cold something else was sliding around, something warmer that I did not want to look at.

"I need to run an errand downtown," I said, when the plates were cleared.

"I'll drive you."

"I'd rather walk."

"It's eight miles."

"Then I'd rather take a cab."

He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he knew.

But Hester said, "Let her go, Jonas, the girl needs air," and he let me.

The courthouse was quiet on a Saturday.

A guard let me in through the side door, because the records window kept Saturday hours.

The woman at the second-floor counter was the same sixty-year-old with the beaded chain.

She looked up and beamed.

"Mrs. Middleton!" she said. "Oh, honey, I just heard. That was the sweetest thing."

"The sweetest thing?"

"Your husband! Coming in every morning."

She pressed a hand to her chest.

"I've been in this office thirty years and I never saw a man so nervous."

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