The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Rehoboth

I went.

Andrew drove me to Rehoboth on a bright Saturday in September, three hours with the windows down.

Bean stayed home with Trish and an entire bag of teething rings.

The Wentworth beach house was gray shingles and a wide white porch, two streets back from the boardwalk.

Sand on the steps. A broken wind chime. A rocking chair with a cushion that had faded to nothing.

"I'll be on the beach," Andrew said. "If you wave, I'll come. If you don't, I'll be on the beach."

"I know."

"I'm going to be very bad at the beach."

"I know that too."

He kissed my forehead and walked off toward the water with his shoes in his hand.

Oscar opened the screen door before I knocked.

He was thinner. He'd stopped cutting his hair short.

He was wearing a sweatshirt with a hole in the cuff.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

They were all in the front room.

Philippa on the couch, in white jeans, with her legs crossed and a glass of iced tea.

A gray-haired woman in pearls in the armchair by the window, very straight. Oscar's mother.

A man in a suit at the dining table with a folder. The lawyer.

Nobody offered me a seat. Then Philippa moved over and patted the couch beside her.

I sat.

Oscar stood in the middle of the room.

He didn't sit down, and I understood he'd decided not to before I came.

"I'm going to say this all the way through," he said. "Please don't stop me. If I stop, I won't start again."

"Okay."

"I lied to you for two years."

His mother's hands tightened in her lap.

"In March, the order to keep you on the fourth floor." He swallowed. "Not Edward. Me. I gave the order."

I hadn't known that for sure.

I'd known it anyway.

"I signed the petition and I sat in court and lied about it." His voice went rough. "I let him try to take our daughter, because I was afraid of what he'd take from me."

Philippa didn't look at him. She looked at her iced tea.

"I'm sorry," Oscar said. "Not for loving you. I did. I'm sorry that it wasn't worth anything when it cost me something."

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