He Signed the Divorce Without Reading Page Nine novel · Chapter 33 of 48

Chapter 33: The Letter I Burned

We went up to my grandmother's bedroom with the envelope and a pot of the old man's cider.

He lit the grate, and the room came slowly out of the dark.

Neither of us said anything about page nine.

We lay on the quilt with the pages spread between us, and after a while he turned and put his mouth against my shoulder.

I turned my head, and he kissed me.

It was slow and tired, and it felt like being forgiven.

His hand slid under my sweater.

I put my palm flat on his chest and stopped him.

"Wait."

He went still.

"I have to tell you something," I said. "Before this goes any further, because you will want to throw the cider."

He sat up on one elbow.

"Tell me."

"I have kept something from you since the winter."

I had not said it aloud to anyone, not to my lawyer and not to the mirror.

"The week after Trevor was sentenced, a letter came to the lab," I said. "From the prison. One page, in his handwriting."

"You told me he wrote."

"I told you he wrote. I told you I burned it. I didn't tell you what it said."

Nathaniel's face went careful.

"What did it say?"

I could still see it, every line.

"Claire. I hear you're with Rhodes. Ask who paid for my lawyer. Ask the Rhodes family. I never had the brains to plan any of it alone."

The grate popped.

Nathaniel said nothing at all.

"I read it once," I said. "I burned it in this fireplace. I thought it was Trevor's last trick, to put a crack in my wedding. I thought he'd do anything to get me to look at you sideways."

"You didn't show me."

"No."

"All winter and spring."

"I wanted one wedding that wasn't his. I wanted the day to be ours, with no Langley in it."

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