The Bride He Replaced novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Envelope

Hannah's POV

I did not answer Camilla's message, and I told Duncan not to either.

"Let her wonder," I said. "She's made everyone else do it."

He nodded and put the phone away.

Then I told him he owed me something, and that I knew exactly what.

The next afternoon he was in Bea's front room on his knees, with a flat box open and forty-one screws in a muffin tin.

"It's a crib," he said. "How hard can it be?"

"The picture on the box has a baby in it," said Bea, from the armchair. "I'd start there."

I sat on the sofa with my feet up and a heating pad at my back.

Bea had bought the crib on Sunday, secondhand, from a woman who had said the baby had outgrown it.

It was white, with slats, and it came in nineteen pieces.

Duncan held a wooden rail against the frame and looked at the instruction sheet.

"Step four says to insert part C into part G," he said.

"Is that the one with the hole?"

"They all have a hole."

"Then try the hole."

He tried the hole.

Something fell off the other side with a clatter.

"I've rebuilt a hotel boiler room," he said, to the ceiling, "and this is the worst thing I've ever done with my hands."

"You could ask for help."

"I don't ask for help."

"That's what got you into this," I said.

He glanced over his shoulder.

He did not smile, but his eyes did, and for a moment the room felt warmer than the heating pad.

I looked away first.

It was a stupid thing, and I knew it.

I had a husband who was not a husband and a man on my floor who had watched me be wronged.

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