The Wife They Burned novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Gate Log

I crossed the street in my socks and knocked on the driver's window.

Abel jerked awake so hard he hit his head on the frame.

Abel rolled the window down.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi. What are you doing in front of my house?"

"Sleeping, apparently. It's the hospital's house now," he said. "I heard."

"Abel."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"Somebody poured gas on your door because they thought you were behind it," he said. "Now you're on the internet, every day, telling the world where you live. I'm suspended. I've got nothing to do at night."

"So you sit out here."

"Since the slap."

"That was three weeks ago."

"Yes, ma'am."

I stood there in the cold, with my arms wrapped around myself.

Nobody had sat up all night for me since my mother died.

His phone buzzed on the dashboard.

He looked at the screen and sat up straight.

"Get in," he said. "Put your shoes on first. We're going to Highmoor."

At one in the morning, the shore lane behind Highmoor was black and wet and smelled of the Sound.

Abel parked with the lights off by a hedge, a hundred yards past the pool.

The cottage was still there behind the yellow tape. Just the chimney and two black walls.

A small metal service gate in the hedge opened onto the lane.

A flashlight clicked on and off on the other side.

The night guard came through the gate in his security jacket.

He was in his sixties, heavyset, with a white mustache.

Junie had called his gatehouse the castle, and she'd drawn it for him in orange crayon.

"Mrs. Kendrick," he said, and took off his cap.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to the burial. They told staff to keep away."

"I know they did."

He held out a folded sheaf of paper.

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