After Ninety-Nine Lies, My Husband Finally Told Me the Truth novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: After Ninety-Nine
The first pain came at nine that night, while we were washing dishes.
I put down the plate I was holding and said, "Anders."
He looked at my face and dried his hands.
"How far apart?"
"I don't know yet."
"Then we'll find out."
He pulled out his pocket notebook and a pencil, and I started to laugh and had to hold the counter.
"You're timing me."
"I'm timing you."
"Of course you are."
He wrote the minutes down in his square hand, one line at a time.
By eleven they were five minutes apart and the snow had come in sideways off the lake.
The county road was closed past the cove.
Cliff brought the sheriff's SUV up Sparrow Cove Road with the lights going and the wipers fighting the white.
He was out of the car before it stopped rocking.
"Get her in the back," he said. "Hospital's forty minutes if the plow's been through."
"It hasn't," Anders said.
"Then thirty-nine."
They put me in the back seat with a pillow and a coat.
Anders climbed in beside me and took my hand.
I was a nurse.
I had sat with people while they did hard things, and I knew exactly what was happening and how long it would take.
None of that helped.
Somewhere past the half mark, with a pain that took my whole back and the wipers beating, I heard myself say it.
"I'm not fine."
Anders went still.
"I'm not fine," I said again, louder, and my voice broke. "I'm scared. I've never done this. My grandmother's gone, and my mother was never here, and I have no idea how to be anybody's mother. I'm not fine, Anders. I'm not."
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