He Let Them Think She Was His novel · Chapter 23 of 32
Chapter 23: What Lorna Chose
"Not in here," Lorna said. "In the kitchen."
She stood up from Ward's visitor chair slowly, holding the arm, and I followed her down the hall past the portraits.
I still had the letter in my fist.
The kitchen had the same yellow curtains and the same oak table with the burn mark in the corner where I had set down a hot pan at twenty-six.
Lorna had taught me to roll pie crust on that table.
She had taught me to make her mother's biscuits, to cut the butter in cold, and not to talk while I kneaded.
She filled the kettle, and I let her.
"Sit," she said.
"I'll stand."
"Then stand." She set the kettle on the burner. "I'll make tea either way."
"Don't."
She turned the burner off.
"Tell me," I said. "All of it. You wrote this five days after I buried our baby."
"I wrote it the week I understood what Ward had done."
"You knew about her. For two years."
"Yes."
"You came to my hospital bed with soup."
"That was two days before I knew," Lorna said. "I knew nothing on the tenth. I swear it to you. I learned on the twelfth, when I found a bank statement in Ward's coat."
"And you waited two more days to write it down."
"I waited two days to stop shaking."
She said it so plainly that for a moment I had nothing to say.
"Why?" I said finally. "Why would you do it? You sat across from me at Sunday dinner. You watched me ask him. You let him say 'a young woman in trouble,' and you went down on the floor."
"I went down because I couldn't watch you ask."
"You fainted so you wouldn't have to hear the answer."
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