After Ninety-Nine Lies, My Husband Finally Told Me the Truth novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Founders' Day

By ten on Founders' Day, the yard held more people than I had ever seen in it.

Folding chairs ran in rows down the slip, facing the new hull on its cradle, and a banner over the shed doors said Fjelstad Boatworks, Since 1951.

Children ran between the chairs with paper flags.

A brass band tuned up by the water.

I stood at the back beside Cliff with the foreman's blue binder against my chest and my other hand flat on my coat.

"She's coming," Cliff said quietly. "Last night I told her she was free to go home. She laughed and said she had a speech to give."

His jaw was tight.

"I can't arrest a woman for throwing a phone in a lake, Cora. Not without the phone."

"I know."

"But I saw it, and I wrote it down, and I'm standing right here."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet."

The doctor sat near the front in a gray suit, alone, with his hands clasped between his knees.

Margit sat in the first row with her back straight, and the foreman stood behind her chair.

Anders sat at the end of the row.

He wore a clean white shirt and a black tie I had bought him for his father's funeral, and the two notebooks lay in his lap with his hands on top of them.

He had not looked back at me once.

I understood that he was afraid I would stop him.

At ten past ten Signe walked up the aisle.

She wore a cream dress and her mother's pearls, with her braid pinned up on her head.

She was radiant.

The crowd turned as she went by, and I heard people murmur that Signe kept it all running.

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