Broken Oaths in White Coats novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Norma's Spare Room

I took my hand out of his.

"Then you can sleep somewhere else tonight," I said. "You have a key to a hotel room. Use it."

Alastair's face stayed calm. It always did.

"Laurel, be reasonable. This is my house too."

"Then it's both of ours, and I'm in it, and she isn't. Go."

He looked at the dish towel soaking red in my fist. For a moment I thought he would ask what I had done to my hand.

He picked up his bag instead.

At the door he said, "You'll see this differently by Friday."

"What happens on Friday?"

"The board meets." He smiled at me, almost kindly. "Get some rest."

The garage door rumbled down behind him.

I stood in the silent kitchen with the lilies and the smell of him.

Then I packed one duffel bag.

I could not sleep in a house that smelled of someone else's flowers.

I drove Norma's wagon back across the city.

Norma lived in a narrow brick house with a porch swing.

Her husband went to bed at eight every night.

The kitchen light was on.

She was sitting at the table in her robe, eating cold casserole out of the dish with a fork.

"I knew it," she said, and pulled out the chair next to her. "Sit. You look like death."

"I cut my hand."

"On what?"

"A wedding photo."

"Good for the photo." She got up, filled a bowl, put it in front of me and set a fork down beside it. "Eat. Rule of this house. You don't talk about a man until you've eaten something he didn't make."

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