After 20 Years, My Husband Kissed Her 10 Minutes Before Our Daughter Graduated novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Table One

Edith Lang rang my doorbell at nine on Saturday morning with a suitcase in one hand and a paper bag of bagels in the other.

"Don't say anything," she said. "I got the six a.m. flight. I'm in a mood."

I had been awake since the partner's call, hearing him say not to come tonight, and I was not going to stay home.

"Edith, you didn't have to come."

"You told me you were fine on the phone Monday. You said it in your work voice." She marched past me into the kitchen. "I hired that voice. I know what it covers."

June was at the counter in her pajamas.

Edith looked at her, set down the bagels, and held out her arms without a word.

June walked into them.

I turned to the window so neither of them would see me wipe my eyes.

Edith was sixty and five foot four and had once made a freight carrier refund us nine thousand dollars by sitting in his lobby until he came down.

She released June, took off her blazer, and sat at my table as if she had always sat there.

"All right," she said. "Tell me where it stands."

I told her in six sentences.

She listened with her chin on her fist.

At the end she said, "Good," and I realized she had been holding something back in her face all along.

"Good?"

"I've been waiting twenty years for you to stop being polite to that man."

"Edith."

"I'm not sorry. He stood behind you at the company picnic in two thousand eleven and told me you'd 'settled' for operations." She slid an envelope across the table. "Open it."

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