He Had Me Drowned, Then Wept at My Grave novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Where Is Kalliopi
Nobody in the church said a word, and for a moment I thought Rhea had won.
It is a terrible thing to be called a liar in front of the people you grew up with.
I felt it in my knees.
Rhea stood with her finger still raised, and her voice had been so sure that I saw a man in the third pew nod.
Then Leo spoke from the floor.
"No," he said.
He said it in Greek, and he said it once.
He was still on one knee among the broken lilies, and his voice did not carry the way hers had.
Rhea looked down at him.
"Leonidas," she said.
"Get up.
"You are making a fool of yourself."
"No," Leo said again, and he stood.
He stood slowly, with a hand on the stone.
He didn't look at his stepmother.
He looked at the parish, and I watched him find his voice.
"She is my wife," he said.
"She is Daphne Rallis Vasilakis.
"I married her in this church, in front of most of you.
"I know my wife.
"I broke her wrist in the second year, and I cracked her ribs in the third, and some of you saw it, and said nothing.
"I said nothing.
"I told them I fell, she told them she fell, and you let us."
A sound went through the benches.
It wasn't a gasp.
It was lower than that, the sound of three hundred people being told what they already knew.
"Sit down," Rhea said, sharply.
"Mother," Leo said.
It was the word he used when he was a boy of twelve and she had first come to his father's house.
I had heard him say it perhaps twice in three years.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Had Me Drowned, Then Wept at My Grave are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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